Teams working on high emissions at Lethabo Power Station

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Pretoria - Eskom on Wednesday apologised to the community around the Lethabo Power Station for the high emissions due to a build-up of ash in filters.

“The Lethabo power station is currently experiencing very high emissions on four of its six units due to the failure of the ash plant equipment that is responsible for moving ash to the ash dump, resulting in significant fly ash backlog on the precipitator hoppers of all six units. Precipitator hoppers are the filters that remove dust,” said the utility.

The ash in the precipitator hoppers have made them less effective, resulting in the higher than normal emissions. 

“We have managed to restore precipitator hoppers of two of the six units, with steady progress being seen at two other units,” said the utility of the power station located in the Free State.

Unit 5 has been taken off load for repairs and production from the other units has been reduced in order to lower the emission levels in line with the power station’s atmospheric emission licence conditions.

Dedicated teams are on site and working around the clock to restore the precipitator performance and reduce the emissions.

However, some of the precipitator fields have internal damage which will require the unit to be shut down for repair work to take place. This work may take some time to complete and recover the good performance levels the power station had prior to this incident. 

“Eskom would like to apologise to the community and members of the public that are likely to be affected by the higher than normal emissions at Lethabo Power Station.” – SAnews.gov.za