Kusile crisis: Eskom in urgent bid to prevent 220m-tall chimney collapse, restore much-needed megawatts

Eskom is urgently trying to come up with a plan to prevent the collapse of one of Kusile Power Station's two 220-metre-tall chimneys after a major incident in October 2022.

At the same time experts from international contractors and Eskom are trying to find a temporary solution that will allow it to operate the three units affected by the incident and thereby restore 2 100 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity to the grid and negate at least two stages of load shedding.

News24 has learnt that solutions will prove time-consuming and expensive. Temporary exhaust stacks manufactured from either steel or concrete would need to be almost 100m tall and would take at least 12 months to build. There is yet no firm cost estimate for the work.