There will not be power cuts as a result of the Majuba power station crisis anywhere in the country on Monday, Eskom said.

“There will be no load shedding today [Monday]. We managed to restore coal supplies to two of the six units at the [Majuba] power station. This means that one third of the power station’s normal capacity is back in service,” said spokesman Andrew Etzinger.

“As a result Eskom is not needing to implement load shedding during the day. However, the power system remains under pressure and consumers are urged to use electricity sparingly for the remainder of the week.”

A coal storage silo at the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga cracked on Saturday and later collapsed. Etzinger said as a result coal conveyor systems were damaged.

On Sunday, alternative measures were put in place to deliver the coal needed.

“For units one and two, we had to bring in coal through an alternative delivery mechanism involving the trucking of coal,” he said.

“Then the coals were placed on mobile conveyors using front-end loaders, and the current rate 1200 tonnes of coal per hour were being brought in.”
Eskom was working on a similar solution for delivering coal to units five and six.

He said units three and four were not affected. The operation involved excess manpower and cost but Etzinger could not immediately provide figures. SAPA