By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Eskom has confirmed that an explosion occurred at unit 4 of Medupi power station on Sunday night.
The incident is thought to have caused unit 5 to trip.
No injuries have been reported and all employees and contractors have been accounted for.
“The incident occurred during the activity to displace hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air respectively, for the purposes of finding an external leak,” said Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.
“Following the power station preliminary investigation, it appears that while performing this activity air was introduced into the generator at a point where hydrogen was still present in the generator at sufficient quantities to create an explosive mixture, which ignited and resulted in the explosion.”
“It also appears that there was a deviation from the procedure for carrying out this activity.”
The Medupi coal-fired power station — which had long been plagued by cost overruns, delays and design defects, causing intermittent breakdowns in some of its units and it took 14 years to complete the power station, and cost R122 billion.
In a statement this morning, Eskom said the explosion took place at 22:50 on Sunday.
Eskom said that unit 4, where the blast occurred, had been on a “short-term outage” since 6 August when the blast occurred.
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.
The utility said it was in the process of returning unit 5 to service.
“Eskom will update the public on developments, as well as to what extent will this unfortunate incident impact the national electricity grid,” it added.
First pictures of the damage caused by the explosion at #Eskom #Medupi Unit 4 last night: pic.twitter.com/smEVoVMAAn
— Chris Yelland (@chrisyelland) August 9, 2021
Eskom will place those employees who were responsible to manage and execute this work under precautionary suspension pending the conclusion of an investigation into the explosion.