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Electricity to be off in some parts of Johannesburg CBD on Christmas
Christmas cheer may be short-lived in the Johannesburg CBD as City Power needs to implement an emergency isolation for over five hours.
The City of Johannesburg’s CBD. Picture: iStock
City Power will be cutting the electricity supply to some parts of the Johannesburg CBD on Christmas Day.
An emergency isolation is needed in order for technicians to begin full restoration work after a fire damaged infrastructure in the areas.
Although some areas have been restored, City Power stated that the isolation is necessary to clear debris and damaged cables from the affected tunnels.
No power on Christmas Day
The emergency outage will affect the Central substation, and will run from 8.30am to 2pm on Christmas Day.
The areas without supply will be Marshalltown, the Johannesburg CBD, areas surrounding and including Selby, as well as City and Suburban.
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Unfortunately, there will still be roughly 40% of the affected area that will have to wait longer for their service to return as 1.2 kilometres of new cable needs to be laid.
“While power supply from the isolation will be restored by 2pm to 60 percent of customers, we anticipate that repairs on the underground cables may extend to Saturday, 28 December,” confirmed City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
“After which, 100% of supply will be restored. We apologise for the inconvenience caused,” he concluded.
Other areas without supply
Elsewhere, residents in Lenasia, Robertsham and Fleurhof will begin Christmas Day without electricity.
In Fleurhof, rain delayed the installation of a new mini-substation, while cable theft threatens to ruin the day in Robertsham.
Lenasia’s Nirvana substation was down as of 5am, with City Power stating that technicians had been dispatched to locate the fault
On a positive note, City Power were able to restore supply in parts of Roodepoort within 24 hours after a mini-substation caught fire.
A fire near the Florin Road substation was reported on 23 December, with City Power delivering, installing and successfully testing the new mini-sub by Christmas Eve.
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