Durban - Our pictures of old Durban this week take in the Congella Power Station which supplied the city’s power needs for 50 years.
The station was built on eight hectares of land bordered by South Coast Road on the east and the M4 South on the west. Bayhead Road bounds it on the north.
To shoot the modern picture, our photographer Shelley Kjonstad perched on top of a wooden ladder looking over a wall on the 13th floor of Flamingo Court in Umbilo Road, which looked directly over the old power station. Although it shows the area from the other side, it closely matches a 1970s picture of the power station with the city in the background.
While the station itself has been demolished, many of the original outbuildings can be seen, as can some of the warehouses in the background of the early pictures.
The Congella Power Station was commissioned in July 1928 and had an initial capacity of 24MW, extended to 98MW by 1938. Before the outbreak of WWII, it was decided to build Congella 2 on the same site. Congella 2 is on the left.
A 40MW generator set was ordered, the largest then in Escom. However the first set and three boilers were commandeered by the British government and installed at Earley Power Station to provide power for war industries. The replacement set was lost at sea in 1943 so Congella 2 was only up and running in 1946. A second 40MW set was commissioned in 1948 and a third in 1951 bringing capacity to 120MW.
Congella 1 was one of the world’s most advanced power stations in its day. It was the first station in South Africa to burn pulverised coal and the first to be equipped with electrostatic precipitators, yet its nickname, Old Smokey, persisted.
The first power plant in Durban was installed in the Market Square in 1886 to provide lighting for the Town Hall (now the Post Office) as well as the Royal Hotel, Central Hotel and the Railway Station, while the Durban Harbour Department installed a small generating plant at the “Point” in 1892.
Municipal electricity in Durban was established with a power station at Bamboo Square, Point, with electric lighting switched on for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in June 1897. The station was extended in 1908, and 1912.
On April 21, 1925, Escom and the Durban Municipality agreed that a new station would be built at Congella on reclaimed land, which had been a marshy waste. It was situated over hard shale, with foundations taken down to solid rock, ranging from 3m to 6m. The site was close to Durban Bay, ensuring an adequate supply of cooling water. The intake works were near the entrance to the Graving Dock.
As the city developed, complaints about coal and ash deposits increased, so in 1946 work was begun on two 92m concrete and brick chimneys to take the outlet gases from the No.1 boiler house.
Much of the marshy land around the station was reclaimed using Congella’s ash deposits. The ash was run into a sump from where it was pumped to settling dams in low lying areas of the neighbourhood which were being reclaimed. After the water had drained away, the deposit had reasonable load bearing qualities.
Floods and a school of jellyfish shut down the plant.
Floods in the South Durban basin are not a new phenomenon, with Congella being flooded twice.
On the night of August 3, 1937, 280mm of rain fell in two hours causing extensive flood damage resulting in complete shut-down of the station for 10 hours. With the aid of three engines from the Fire Brigade, partial power supply was restored by 8am and normal supplies resumed 30 hours later.
Fred Rogers, who worked at the station, described the scene. “At the height of the flood, water was entering the power station in waves. It flooded into the entrances, underground basements and tunnels. Water entered the boiler furnaces via the ashing doors where it erupted into steam, necessitating the shutting-down of the boilers. The power station had drowned.”
Another worker, Jeffrey Fairbanks, described “The Day Congella Died of Thirst”. Since the station drew its cooling water from the sea, its suction chamber was below sea level from where the water was pumped to the condensers. “Millions of small fish swam about in the suction chamber. One day a school of jellyfish blocked the opening of the suction chamber, preventing water from entering. This resulted in the pumps emptying the suction chamber and millions of little fish were drawn into the condensers, blocking them.”
Congella Power Station was also flooded on December 29, 1977 when a severe storm caused the Umbilo River canal to burst its banks.
After the province was linked to the national network in 1971, the power station was slowly decommissioned. All sets at Congella were finally decommissioned in December 1978 with the formal closing ceremony on December 8.
In it’s 50-year history Congella 1 and 2 produced 22 154 GWh and burnt 15 089 million metric tons of coal.
The Independent on Saturday would like to thank Mali Govender, supervisor at Flamingo Court, for assisting us with the modern photograph. We would also like to thank Chris Shange who carried the long wooden ladder that wouldn’t fit into the lift up 13 floors and who, along with Justin Naidoo, held it secure while Kjonstad shot the photographs.
The Independent on Saturday