Yesterday, a fire broke out at Unit 2 of the Duvha Power Station in Mpumalanga. Eskom confirmed the news and issued a statement that said the blaze was quickly extinguished and no injuries were reported. The damage and cause of the fire are still being investigated with no further info available.
Oh boy, here we go again
Duvha Power Station unit 2 its On fire More Loadshedding @tedblom @ewnreporter @SAfmnews @SABCNews @eNCA . pic.twitter.com/ULwVugBncY
— Mfana Walter Sindane (@WalterMfana) June 13, 2022
Luckily for South Africans, Unit 2 at Duvha has been offline since January for maintenance and overhauling reasons, so this latest calamity should not affect the country’s current power generation capacity. But that also means it is probably going to be a while before it can be brought back online and up to production speed.
The Duvha Power Station was built in 1980 and is one of the cleaner stations in South Africa with pulse jet fabric filters on three of the six units. Those stop 99.99% of the fly ash in the plant’s emissions from entering the air. With the station at full capacity, it can produce 3,600MW, 600MW from each of the six units.
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Even with power generation unaffected by the blaze, load shedding still looms over South Africans. It has been 15 days since the last bit of load shedding. But Eskom can still implement it at any point where necessary.
With the unit offline, one wonders how a fire broke out. It’s no secret that Eskom has had to deal with numerous cases of cable theft, vandalism, and sabotage in recent months. Hopefully, that isn’t the case here. It is bad enough South Africans have to deal with load shedding, but power outages due to sabotage are salt in an already gaping wound.
Sources: MyBroadband, Daily Maverick
