Industria Substation explosion: Power to be restored to affected areas by 6pm, damages to cost around R3m

City of Joburg MMC for environment and infrastructure services, Michael Sun, has promised residents affected by outages due to an explosion at Industria Substation, west of Johannesburg, that power will be restored before 6pm on Tuesday.

Sun and local councillors conducted an oversight visit to the Industria Substation managed by City Power to check on repairs, after parts of the substation blew up on Sunday, due to overloading blamed on the escalating stages of load shedding implemented by Eskom.

Residents of Riviera, Langlaagte, Industria, Bosmont and the surrounding areas have been without power ever since and the damages at the substation are estimated to be around R3 million.

ALSO READ: These Joburg areas can expect extra hours of darkness, due to substation fire

Sun said technicians have been working around the clock to restore electricity to the affected areas.

“Since midnight last night [Monday], much of the outages have already been restored. We are now left with just a few pockets of the areas that still need to be restored.

“We’re looking at the estimated time of restoration of 6pm. I’m pushing my colleagues and technicians within City Power to ensure that we bring back power to our residents by 6pm,” Sun said.

Load shedding

The MMC warned that load shedding was having a dire impact on City Power’s substations, saying they were not built to endure the constant switching off of power due to rolling blackouts.

“This is the direct impact that load shedding has on the City of Johannesburg. In fact, the substation didn’t catch fire, it exploded,” Sun said.

“The system within Johannesburg was never designed or built to withstand the continuous switching on and off during load shedding.

“If you look at stage 2, stage 4, stage 6 load shedding – those only aggravate and damage the infrastructure,” he added.

With City Power expected to spend approximately R3 million to repair the damage at Industria Substation, the MMC said it was important for councillors to see the destruction for themselves.

“They must also be here to see the extent of damage and the cost that City Power incurs when there is load shedding.”

Interventions to ease rolling power cuts

Sun also explained some of the interventions the City of Joburg was embarking on to ensure it reduces electricity consumption and doesn’t rely on Eskom for power.

“We are retrofitting street lights with LED technology that we’re saving between three to five times the energy of conventional street lights.

“The exciting thing is that in early October, we’ll be releasing the first phase of the request for proposals to onboard Integrated Power Development Schemes (IPDS), so that we can procure additional capacity to feed into the grid so that we’re able to avert stages of load shedding.”

Eskom downgraded load shedding to stage 5 at midnight on Monday after the blackouts were escalated to stage 6 on Sunday.

The rotational power cuts were eased after a unit each at Camden, Kriel, Kusile and Kendal were returned.

Stage 5 load shedding is expected to last until further notice.

NOW READ: Load shedding: Eskom launches three power purchase programmes to secure 1 000MW