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Eskom to investigate fire at Majuba, but at ease with coal supply delivery

A fire at the Majuba Power Station has been extinguished, Eskom said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

According to Eskom, the fire started on the incline conveyer belt system from the rail offloading facility at around 15:00 on Wednesday afternoon and "was extinguished swiftly by the power station's fire team".

No injuries were sustained.
 
Eskom said the incident does impact on its coal delivery to Majuba Power Station which was primarily done via rail.

"We will use road delivery to offset the absence of rail transportation for the duration of the recovery of the damaged infrastructure. Majuba Power Station's coal stock is healthy at over 50 days of stock. We expect that the reclamation from the coal stock and road delivery will be adequate to sustain Majuba burn," Eskom said.

"We will have to wait for the facility to cool down in order to start a forensic investigation to determine the cause of the fire. Once it is safe, the investigation will commence."

Fin24 reported earlier on Wednesday that the Directorate of Priority Police Investigations have confirmed that a case of alleged sabotage at Eskom's Tutuka coal-fired power station in Mpumalanga was referred to them for investigation.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, at a media conference last week Wednesday, announced that sabotage had contributed to recent load shedding. The president had cut short an official visit to Egypt short to return the South Africa after Eskom took the unprecedented step of introducing stage 6 load shedding due to an acute shortage of capacity.

Eskom said on Wednesday morning that it was not expecting to have to implement load shedding on the day due to a drop in electricity demand over the holiday period. It previously said the likelihood of power cuts for the remainder of the week is low, but cuts could be implemented at short notice with the power system still "vulnerable and unpredictable", it said.

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