Explosion at the Eskom Medupi power plant
South Africa, Lephalale: Scarcely a week after Eskom proudly announced the completion of its Medupi coal-fired power plant disaster struck.
Image source: ESI Africa
South Africa, Lephalale: Scarcely a week after Eskom proudly announced the completion of its Medupi coal-fired power plant disaster struck.
The Medupi power station project in Lephalale is a greenfield, coal-fired power plant comprising six units rated in total at almost 4,800 MW installed capacity, owned and operated by Eskom.
The design does not include cooling towers, as the plant uses direct cooling technology. Other facilities include a coal stockpile, an ash dump and transmission lines that connect the power plant to the national electricity grid.
The plant is extensive, accommodating six boilers, and each boiler is powered by an 800 MW turbine, while the units have 390 switchgear installed. Medupi incorporates super-critical technology, enabling it to operate at higher temperatures and pressures than Eskom’s previous generation plants.
While Eskom identifies Medupi as the fourth-largest coal-fired plant and largest dry-cooled power station globally, the project has had many setbacks.
The final generating unit – Unit 1, the last of six generating units to be completed – attained commercial operation status and was handed over to Eskom’s generation division on Saturday 31 July 2021. However, eight days later, Eskom announces Medupi Power Station has experienced an explosion on the Unit 4 generator at approximately at 11 p.m. on Sunday 8 August. The Eskom team also suspects the incident resulted in Unit 5 tripping.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported and all employees and contractors were accounted for.
Unit 4 was on a short-term outage (since 6 August) when the incident occurred, and all work on the unit was suspended with immediate effect. This included the suspension of all permits to work on the plant until further notice.
Energy analyst Chris Yelland explained via Twitter that he has it on “reliable authority that there was an internal hydrogen explosion within the 800 MW generator” and that the incident occurred during the “activity to displace hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air respectively, for the purposes of finding an external leak”.
Source: ESI Africa
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