South Africa: Majuba silo collapse puts system in jeopardy

Load shedding caused by the 1 November collapse of a 40-metre-high coal silo at the 4,110MW-capacity Majuba generation plant has highlighted the vulnerability of South Africa’s national power supply (see AE View). Generation output was reduced from 3.6GW to 1.8GW, and fell to 600MW the next day. As a result, more than 2GW was shed from the grid. Staff had been evacuated after a crack was reported early in the afternoon, so there were no injuries. The silo, with storage capacity of 10,000 tonnes, had undergone a civil visual inspection by an external specialist in September 2013