Author: eProp Commercial Property News, 08 December 2014, Load Shedding
Solidarity calls Eskom out over silo collaps.
» Nov 04, 2014:
Trade union Solidarity on Monday released a statement accusing electricity company Eskom of negligence with regard to the collapse of a coal storage silo at the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga on Saturday.
Solidarity claims that Eskom had been aware of worsening structural vibration since January‚ and had ignored evaluations showing deterioration in June and again just three weeks before the collapse.
“Vibration of a concrete structure is extremely problematic‚” said Solidarity’s head of the energy industry‚ Deon Reyneke. “The vibration caused or worsened weaknesses in the silo and as the vibration increased‚ it eventually led to the collapse.”
Mr Reyneke said Eskom should have addressed the issue earlier‚ and the temporary measures used to ramp up electricity supply from 600MW to 1‚200MW had “jeopardised safety at the power station”‚ putting employees at risk‚ creating a fire hazard and risking truck accidents due to the “hundreds of trucks per hour” required to offload coal to temporary coal feeder units.
Also on Monday‚ Eskom released a statement saying “work at the Majuba power station has progressed better than expected”. They said they did not expect load shedding on Monday or Tuesday this week‚ but the system would be under extreme pressure on Wednesday and Thursday.
Eskom further called on South Africans to try saving 10% of their electricity by switching off geysers and pool pumps‚ switching off nonessential lights‚ keeping air conditioners at 23ºC and responding to televised alerts.
