Good news about Eskom power station that caught fire

Eskom says Kriel Power Station’s Unit 6 generator will not be offline for long after catching fire in early November.

However, the state-owned power utility does not have an estimated restoration time for the unit’s return to service yet.

“The standard investigation procedure is still underway to assess the extent of the damage, as well as the time required for repairs and restoration,” it said.

“Eskom will make a further announcement when the results of this investigation are finalised.”

According to the power utility, an oil pipe burst, spilling oil onto hot surfaces, which ignited the oil and caused a large fire. MyBroadband asked Eskom how long it will take to return the unit to service.

Eskom’s coal-fired Kriel Power Station in Mpumalanga comprises six units with a combined capacity of 3,000MW. According to Eskom, the outage has reduced capacity by 475MW.

News that Kriel Power Station caught fire first emerged on Twitter, with user Limpopo Current Affairs (@BlaqSlav) stating that the unit 6 generator caught fire in the early evening of Sunday, November 3, 2024.

“Load-shedding might come back in full swing,” it added.

Energy expert Chris Yelland responded to the post, confirming the fire, but contradicting the speculation about the return of load-shedding.

“Not so sure about load-shedding coming back in full swing, but it looks like a pretty serious explosion and fire at Kriel power station yesterday late afternoon,” he said.

Yelland said Eskom had provided him with quick feedback explaining how the fire occurred.

However, he highlighted that video footage of the fire showed a gaping hole in the generator hall’s roof.

“I am somewhat surprised that a burst oil pipe and associated fire would cause such a gaping hole… Looks more like a massive explosion to me,” he said.

Eskom later clarified the situation in a statement explaining the outage. It assured that the incident would not impact its generation capacity or cause load-shedding to return.

“Unit 6 at Kriel Power Station correctly tripped following the loss of hydraulic oil to the turbine valves,” the power utility said.

“A preliminary investigation revealed that an oil pipe had broken, causing oil to spill on the hot surfaces of the turning, which triggered a fire.”

With the unit 6 outage removing 475MW of generation capacity, Eskom noted that even with the temporary downtime, unplanned outages still stood at 8,483MW.

This was roughly 4,500MW better than the base case for its summer 2024 forecast.

Eskom suffered a more catastrophic failure at its Medupi Power Station in August 2021, when its unit 4 generator exploded, causing the neighbouring unit 5 generator to trip.

According to the power utility, no staff were injured by the explosion. It subsequently explained the sequence of events that caused the explosion.

With the generating unit scheduled for maintenance, technicians were tasked with purging oxygen from the generator using carbon dioxide.

However, Yelland said technicians failed to thoroughly purge oxygen from the generator, resulting in a mixture of air and hydrogen, which ignited and caused a massive explosion.

Eskom confirmed Yelland’s explanation of the explosion’s cause. The power utility added that technicians had deviated from the procedure for preparing the generating unit for planned maintenance.

The explosion completely destroyed the generating unit, with Yelland saying Eskom would have to replace the unit.

Medupi’s Unit 4 generator was initially expected to return to service by August 2024 at a cost of around R2.5 billion, according to former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter.

However, in October 2024, Yelland warned that the return of Medupi Power Station Unit 4 had been delayed until March 2025.

He also noted that Eskom had delayed the return of Koeberg Unit 2 until December this year.

“Until the above are successfully completed, Eskom is reluctant to say load-shedding is finally over in SA,” added Yelland.