Lenasia South may be in the dark for a week after fire guts substation

Lenasia South residents may not have electricity until Friday (11 November) if City Power is unable to repair and restore a transformer that was gutted by a fire.

Large parts of the suburb were plunged into darkness after a fire broke out at the 88/11KV substation substation that supplies electricity to the area.

It is understood that the fire started immediately after, or during load shedding restoration early on Friday morning

Fire extinguished

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the fire has been extinguished and mop up operations have been begun.

Mangena said City Power teams are on site to do the assessments and work on recovery and restoration of electricity.

“A contractor has also arrived to work with City Power technicians to assess the repairs and material need. The fire completely razed down transformer no.3, partially damaging the standby transformer.”

“Low Voltage cables and High Voltage line links were also completely burnt down,” Mangena said.

First option

Mangena added that the repair and restoration plans will involve bringing the standby transformer online and energise it.

“The transformer needs about 40 000 litres of oil which will be filled. We will also replace Low Voltage terminations, and testing of the cables and other electrical tests will be done before we can energise.”

“We are hoping to start with this work this evening, and if all goes according to plan, we are looking at restoring power on Sunday evening,” he said.

Worst case scenario

“The second option, should the above fail, would involve the dismantling and removal of the burnt transformer and to bring the new transformer on site. This work will include all the primary and secondary cabling and commissioning tests.”

“We expect this work to be completed on Friday next week, 11 November, after which power will be restored – if all goes according to plan. The other substations that were affected by the fire upstream – Ennerdale, Hopefield substations – have been restored. Only Lunar substation will be restored later this afternoon,” Mangena said.  

City Power has apologised to residents for the outage.

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