Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has visited the Majuba power station where she found that the plant was operating better than had been anticipated.

“The plant was performing better than Eskom had anticipated last week. I await the report of the investigation being conducted by national and international experts,” said the Minister, following her visit to the plant on Saturday.

This after the country was plunged into darkness after one of the silos at the Majuba power station cracked and later collapsed. This left South Africans without electricity.

“Having listened to everyone, including Mike Rossouw, an expert on Eskom’s capacity to deliver power reliably in the medium-term, who travelled with me, I came away with the following conclusions on the stability of our fleet of power plants: While the system is tight, we can stabilise the fleet. However, it will take a concerted effort and time and I appeal to everyone to be patient.

There will be incidents like this but they are rare and, as we have shown, they can be overcome if we all work together,” she explained.

The Minister had said that while she had travelled to the plant located in Mpumalanga in a sombre mood this had changed.

“I travelled back from Majuba with a real sense of pride in the Eskom staff at all levels for the manner in which they dealt with the situation from before the incident happened to the development and very rapid implementation of an innovative medium-term solution that kept the lights on after less than a day of power interruptions.”

Minister Brown was impressed with the truckloads of coal that were scooped up and fed manually into the units.

“I watched transfixed as every three minutes two truckloads of coal were scooped up and fed manually into the units. What is more remarkable is that the temporary manual operations are to continue 24/7 for a few months.”

Last week, the Minister appealed to all stakeholders and political parties to work together to overcome our challenges in the electricity supply space.

“What I saw and heard was the kind of single-minded pulling together which I had in mind. It made me believe that the spirit of 2010 is alive and well and lives deep in our DNA as a nation.

“Indeed, many hands make light work in more ways than one,” she explained. – SAnewsgov.za