EDENVALE POWER: Repairs going according to plan
Filling the cable could take anything up to eight hours.
Three eight kilometre oil filled feeder cables for Edenvale receive power from Eskom.
All three are due to be replaced.
According to ward 18 councillor for Edenvale, Clr Heather Hart, the new cables have not been commissioned due to delays.
Of the three cables, one is beyond repair.
“Technicians will repair just one of the cables because through one cable, with some backup from the Horwood sub they can restore power to the whole of Edenvale,” Clr Hart said.
The cable repair has been completed and the technicians are currently filling the cable with oil.
“This is a meticulous job and needs to be completed slowly as to not place too much stress on the newly repaired cable,” Clr Hart said.
Filling the cable could take anything up to eight hours.
Once filled, the cable can be re-commissioned, which will also take time, as the entire Edenvale grid cannot be switched on at once.
“If the system is placed under too much stress it will collapse and take the Horwood sub with it. We cannot afford to lose the Horwood sub too as it will result in the entire Edenvale being left without power,” Clr Hart said.
It is expected that anytime from 9pm tonight, barring no other problems are encountered, technicians will start restoring power to Edenvale.
And I hope ‘if’ it does come back on @ ‘9pm’ it stays because we need warrm water and hot food that has been bought recently to eat…and matrics are busy writing prelims and need to study, this is a bad time to be doing this!!! Please get it sorted out!! We hungry, cold and tired!!.
Would love to know the story behind this outage. I suppose we can count ourselves lucky to get any power at all most of the time. In10 years our kids will probably have more blackout than uptime. Time for more big exec bonuses ESKOM as most of us pay full and on time to make sure you have the cash flow ready…
Fantastic to have some actual factual news. They are repairing one of the cables. The question remains, when will all three be REPLACED to minimize future maintenance issues? Obviously the feeders are on their last legs and at best the current repair is only temporary, until existing usage causes a new collapse!!!