Vereeniging Power Station - Heritage (original) (raw)

Between 1923 and 1933, Vereeniging Power Station was extended four times giving it a generating capacity of 140 MW and making it one of the largest stations in the British Empire at that time. The mines, however, were also expanding quickly, and by 1934 the VFP was nearing the limits of its capacity to supply power to the gold mines of the Rand. In that year, Amalgamated Collieries acquired the rights to mine coal on the property of McKay Estates, where the small Springfield Colliery had gone into liquidation. Amalgamated Collieries was a subsidiary of Vereeniging Estates. The purpose of the move was to induce Sir Bernard Price, chairman of the VFP, to build a second power station in Vereeniging. Vereeniging Estates allowed its new land to become the site for Klip Power Station, which would receive its coal from Springfield Colliery. Mines were requiring more electricity, and more residents in Johannesburg and Vereeniging were applying for electric current. Despite the new Klip Power Station, another extension had to be built onto Vereeniging Power Station in the late 1930’s. In 1936, the station was connected to the Witwatersrand system by means of 80,000 volt lines, those being lines of the highest voltage in the southern hemisphere at that time.

By 1938, ESCOM was on the scene, having been founded in 1923, and with the VFP decided to build Vereeniging’s third power station (Vaal Power Station) next to Vereeniging Power Station, on the opposite bank of the Vaal River.

In 1948, ESCOM bought out the VFP and acquired Brakpan, Simmerpan, Rosherville, and Vereeniging Power Stations. The decade 1950 to 1959 was a decade of rapid expansion for Eskom. The organisation added boilers and generators to six stations including Vereeniging Power Station. In 1959, Eskom erected the region’s fifth power station. Highveld Power Station was built on the coal-fields surrounding Vereeniging and it completed the greatest concentration of power generating stations in South Africa (at that time). The five power stations were producing a total of 1 780 MW, but Vereeniging Power Station had become known as the Old Vereeniging Station and despite all its expansion was producing less then one eleventh of the five station’s total output (160 MW). The Old Vereeniging Station was one of the biggest stations when built, and during its life span, it expanded to nearly four times its original size. The fact that it would be closed down as the smallest of five stations in the region is a testament to the rapid expansion of industry in South Africa.

Vereeniging had become a major centre for steel and engineering industries. With the help of its power plants it had earned the name, “Power House” of the Transvaal. As the Rand Daily Mail reported at the time of its closing, “the importance of Vereeniging Power Station’s contribution to the country’s economy and the development of the gold mines and national industries is inestimable”. In 1974, the Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark News reported that it had “pioneered the way for Eskom’s new grid which provides power to the whole of the Republic”. It was only in 1974 that ESCOM began demolishing the Old Vereeniging Power Station. All that remains today is a restricted area where old and unused coal mineshafts make walking too dangerous. A few of the station’s old subsidiary buildings remain standing. Some are used by some small local businesses. In the area around those businesses, power lines, old slabs of cement, and remnants of railway track still show where Vereeniging Power Station was a symbol “of the awakening industrial life beyond it”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conradie, S. R. and Messerschmidt, L. J. M.: A Symphony of Power: The ESCOM Story. Chris van Rensburg Publications (PTY) Limited, Johannesburg, 2000.

Leigh, R. L.: Vereeniging: South Africa. Courier-Gazette Publishers (PTY) Limited, Vereeniging, 1968.

Rand Daily Mail

Star Newspaper

Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark News

Information was also received from the Eskom information Centre and the Vaal Teknorama Museum.