The damage caused by the fire at Eldorado Park substation. Photo: Twitter/@CityPowerJhb
After five days of darkness, City Power said restoration operations at the fire damaged Eldorado Park substation is progressing well with most of the work almost complete.
Several areas were plunged into darkness on Friday after a blaze gutted the substation.
The damage at the Eldorado Park substation also impacted other substations which affected areas including Devland, Olifantsvlei, Kliptown, Klipspruit and Freedom Park, among other areas.
The executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg Mpho Phalatse said the blaze was a deliberate act of sabotage and instructed the city’s group forensic and investigation services unit to accelerate the rollout of the strategy to stop attacks on the city’s economic infrastructure.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the power utility’s teams have switched on one transformer which will soak oil for about 12 hours.
“The second standby transformer will be switched on later this evening. After that we will be able to start loading customers. We will load customers gradually to ensure a smooth switching and avoid overloading.“
“Work that is outstanding include finalising the stringing of more cables from the switchgear feeder board to the new Ring Main Units. These are supply cables to join to the distributors to different areas,” Mangena said.
Mangena said City Power is on track to restore power to every affected customer by Wednesday as promised.
Meanwhile, Eskom ramped load shedding to stage 4 on Tuesday after two more generating units tripped at its power stations.
The parastatal says its only turning the power off as a last resort to protect the national grid.
Eskom has asked South Africans to use electricity sparingly when power is available as it works around the clock to return the units back to service.
On Monday Eskom said South Africans could experience between 37 and 101 days of load shedding during winter if it’s unable to contain unplanned breakdowns.
Head of the Transmission Division Segomoco Scheppers said load shedding in winter will depend on whether it is able to contain the unplanned breakdowns to below 12 500MW.
ALSO READ: Load shedding: Eskom blames rain and wet coal
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