Suspected sabotage took down entire Eskom power station
Eskom CEO André de Ruyter has revealed that the power utility was forced to take all eight units at the Camden Power Station offline due to human error.
However, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has subsequently implied that the incident was deliberate.
“The events that unfolded there [the Camden power station] a few days ago is clearly an example of… let’s call it ‘resistance’ to be euphemistic,” he said.
Gordhan had said earlier that some Eskom employees were “resisting” moves at the power utility to root out corruption and apply higher performance standards.
“That kind of resistance is what undermines this country’s economy and the confidence of the population in Eskom itself.”
During an interview with 702, De Ruyter described the loss of the Camden Power Station’s entire fleet of generating units as an “own goal”.
“We have lost the entire Camden plant due to an employee opening the wrong valve and in the process contaminating all of our demineralised water supply that we need to run the steam turbine,” he said.
“That’s one of those incidents where you really wish that this could have been avoided.”
De Ruyter explained that Camden being taken offline equated to a loss of between 1,400MW and 1,500MW of generation capacity — more than a stage of load-shedding.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha told MyBroadband that the power utility is investigating a case of human error and that appropriate disciplinary action against the employee would follow.
“Eskom is investigating the incident, and its actions will be guided by its well-established disciplinary code,” he said.
“Where mistakes and errors creep in, Eskom investigates and then takes corrective disciplinary action to manage the employees in question in order to keep such incidents to the minimum.”
Camden’s outage is not the first case of sabotage or human error reported at an Eskom power station in the past two years.
In a far more severe case, a blunder caused Medupi’s 800MW unit 4 generator to explode on Sunday, 8 August 2021, tripping the unit 5 generator in the process.
Eskom explained the explosion occurred when technicians attempted to displace hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air to find an external leak.
Oxygen was introduced to the generator before the hydrogen had been properly purged, causing it to create an explosive mixture that ignited.
“This explosion has resulted in extensive damage to the generator,” Eskom said.
“It also appears that there was a deviation from the procedure for carrying out this activity.”
The power utility suspended eight Medupi employees following the incident.
During Eskom’s State of the System media briefing in January 2022, De Ruyter said Medupi’s repairs would cost around R2.5 billion.
Energy expert Chris Yelland suggested that Eskom could speed up repairs to the damaged unit by using components from the Kusile power station.
However, Eskom told MyBroadband that using Kusile’s parts and equipment was technically and economically unviable.
Instead, the power utility favoured refurbishing Medupi unit 4’s usable components and replacing those that were irreparable.
“The damage assessment is still in progress in tandem with preserving the undamaged plant,” Eskom said.
The power utility estimated that it would be able to return the generator to service by 31 August 2024 — three years after it blew up.