Majuba Power Station between

Volksrust Volksrust is a town in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa near the KwaZulu-Natal provincial border, some 240 km southeast of Johannesburg, 53 km north of Newcastle and 80 km southeast of Standerton. History The town was la ...

and

Amersfoort Amersfoort () is a city and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands, about 20 km from the city of Utrecht and 40 km south east of Amsterdam. As of 1 December 2021, the municipality had a population of 158,531, making it the second- ...

in Mpumalanga,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

, is a

coal-fired power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts capacity. They generate about a th ...

operated by

Eskom Eskom Hld SOC Ltd or Eskom is a South African electricity public utility. It was established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM) and was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie (EVKOM). Eskom repre ...

. Majuba is Eskom's only power station that is not linked to a specific mine and it receives its coal from various sources.

History

Construction started in September 1983 and by April 1996 the first unit was connected to the grid. The last unit was commissioned in April 2001.

Power generation

Majuba has three 665 MW dry-cooled units and three 716 MW wet-cooled units with a total installed capacity of 4,110MW with a turbine

Maximum Continuous Rating In electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, the power rating of equipment is the highest power input allowed to flow through particular equipment. According to the particular discipline, the term ''power'' may refer to electrical or m ...

of 35.3% on the dry-cooled turbines and 37.7% on the wet-cooled units.

Underground coal gasification

In addition to coal, the Majuba Power Station is fired by syngas produced by

underground coal gasification Underground coal gasification (UCG) is an industrial process which converts coal into product gas. UCG is an ''in-situ'' gasification process, carried out in non-mined coal seams using injection of oxidants and steam. The product gas is brought t ...

at the nearby Majuba demonstration facility on the Majuba coalfield. The pilot plant was commissioned in January 2007 and the first electricity was generated from the underground coal gasification gas on 31 May 2007. Produced syngas is transported from the facility to the power station by pipeline with a diameter of . There is a plan to build a 1,200 MW commercial generation facility.

Silo Collapse

On 1 November 2014, the plant was running under normal load when a visible crack was reported on Silo 20 by a member of the operating staff at approximately 12:30. Personnel in the area were subsequently evacuated. At 13:20, the silo collapsed and the plant's output was immediately reduced from 3600MW to 1800MW. Shortly after, the output was reduced further to 600MW.

Coal Supplying

Majuba requires 14 million tonnes (14 Mtpa) of coal per annum which were originally supposed to come from a colliery built and operated by Rand Mines but that mine was decommissioned in 1993. An 8 Mtpa rail link branch from Palmfort was commissioned and, by 1996, was sufficient for the power plant owing to the delayed construction schedule. From 2003 Eskom implemented a policy of procuring coal from new emerging sources which resulted in delivery by road, since the location of the mines precluded their use of the Palmfort line, despite the fact that it was sufficient for Majuba's needs. In early 2000 Majuba started increasing its coal consumption by 2.2 Mtpa to a target of 14 Mtpa by 2010, based on forecasts of electricity demand growth. To accommodate this a 68 km rail line from Ermelo to Majuba was planned which would link up to the heavy haul export rail line from Mpumalanga to

Richards Bay Richards Bay ( af, Richardsbaai) is a town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is situated on a 30 square kilometre lagoon of the Mhlatuze River, which makes it one of the country's largest harbours. Richards Bay also has the deepest natural h ...

. The project was approved by the Eskom board in December 2004 with a cost-to-completion of R1,5-billion. The project ran several years late and was expected to be completed by March 2021 at a cost-to-completion of R8-billion. In addition, in December 2019 a coal tippler takeout conveyor caught fire at Majuba and since then all coal deliveries by rail had ceased.

References

External links

Majuba Power Station
on the

-Website {{National Key Points navbox Coal-fired power stations in South Africa Towers in South Africa Buildings and structures in Mpumalanga Economy of Mpumalanga