Duvha Power Station


Duvha Power Station in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is a coal-fired power plant operated by Eskom. The tall chimneys at Duvha are the second and third tallest structures in Africa, only a chimney located at the Secunda CTL plant is taller.

History

Construction of Duvha Power Station started in November 1975 and the last unit came into operation in 1984.
In 1993 Duvha became the first power station in the world to be retrofitted with pulse jet fabric filter plants on three of its six units. These plants contribute largely to the reduction of air pollution by removing 99.99% of the fly ash, which otherwise would be released into the air through the station's chimneys.
On 8 January 2003, Unit 2 generator exploded while being returned to service after a malfunction. On 9 February 2011 another unit failed catastrophically while performing over speed testing. The units are over speed rated at 3600 rpm and the last recorded speed before failure was 4250 rpm.
It was the first power station in South Africa to have a black power station manager, Ehud Matya.

Power generation

The station consists of six 600 MW units with a total installed capacity of 3,600 MW operating with a turbine Maximum Continuous Rating of 37.6%.
The station is a twin sister to Tutuka Power Station.

Corruption allegations

In April 2017 General Electric filed a court application accusing Eskom of rigging the tender to install a new boiler at the station so that Dongfang Electric would get the contact even though their bid was R1 billion more than the General Electric bid.