Great, except that over the weekend, an explosion occurred at Medupi’s Unit 4, in Lephalale, Limpopo, causing extensive damage.

Speaking on Wednesday, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said repair costs would amount to figures in the billions.

Fin24 reports:

“We are busy with our investigation and have retrieved a significant amount of data from our computer systems, which we will now go through line by line. I don’t want to commit to a number, but the repairs could cost anything between R1.5 billion and R2 billion. We foresee that these repairs could take up to 24 months,” De Ruyter told Fin24.

To give you a sense of the damage, MyBroadband posted this video:

Energy analyst Chris Yelland also shared these photos:

First pictures of the damage caused by the explosion at #Eskom #Medupi Unit 4 last night: pic.twitter.com/smEVoVMAAn

— Chris Yelland (@chrisyelland) August 9, 2021

De Ruyter said there were no indications of any foul play, adding that given the force of the explosion, he’s thankful nobody died.

The bad news is that this means a loss of approximately 700 MW of power, and the likelihood of load shedding looming large.

That number represents about a third of what it takes to power the Eastern Cape, for a sense of scale.

According to Eskom, the incident happened when carbon dioxide was introduced to the generator to displace hydrogen. The generator exploded because the hydrogen wasn’t completely drained and replaced by carbon dioxide, with the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen leading to the incident.

The employees responsible for the error have been placed under precautionary suspension pending the conclusion of the Major Event Investigation, which Eskom says is still ongoing.

While R1,5 billion to R2 billion hurts, energy analyst Ted Blom reckons that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

He spoke with IOL:

Blom said the damage to the generator was extensive, which might present a difficult choice between making repairs and obtaining a new one, which he said was easily in the R50bn price range.

“It may take between R20bn to R40bn depending on the option they take, as you know from the cost of building Medupi, these generators are very expensive. It may take well over a year to effectively repair the unit,” Blom said.