No power again in Pretoria East… with bleak forecast of ‘bonus outages’

Residents in the east of Pretoria have been without any electricity since Wednesday, 11 May, due to a prolonged power outage owing to a damaged mini substation feeding the current transformer.

According to the local ward councillor, Pieter van Heerden, the faulty mini substation feeding the east could not be replaced on Wednesday.

Areas affected by power outage

“The mini substation, which feeds parts of the east, caused outages in Pretorius Park, Brummeria, Lydiana and surrounding areas.

“The mini substation will be replaced today [Thursday],” Van Heerden said.

A team to arrange all the resources and technicians to complete the job confirmed to hit the ground running.

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“The team confirmed there was no possibility to parallel the low voltage network,” he pointed out.

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Mini substation beyond repair: No time frame for restoration of power

Van Heerden said there’s no estimated time of power restoration.

“The mini substation must be completely replaced rather than repaired, and that will take some time to replace.

At this stage, we don’t know when the power will be restored as a lot of work needs to be done.

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Possibility of ‘bonus outages’ due to Stage 6 load shedding

With the current stage 6 load shedding, residents will have to brace themselves for bonus outages.

On Tuesday, 9 May, Rekord reported on power outages in the east caused by an explosion of a current transformer.

Parts of Menlo Park, in the east of Pretoria, were without power since Tuesday after a transformer exploded at 4th Street.

The Tshwane metro spokesperson, Lindela Mashigo, said the current transformer of an outdoor substation (similar to a mini sub) had exploded due to load shedding.

Load shedding impacts electricity network infrastructure

Tshwane MMC for Utilities and Regional Operations and Coordination, Themba Fosi, said load shedding can damage the city’s electricity infrastructure and could lead to prolonged power outages.

The raised levels of load shedding are a crisis for our municipality, affecting both our electricity network, as well as our ability to attend to outages.

-Fosi

Stage 6 load shedding means that rolling blackouts will affect regions of Tshwane two to three times a day for a minimum of six hours per day.

Our networks were never designed for load shedding. Continuously turning the electricity network off and on has a major impact on the condition of our network infrastructure.

Residents can expect additional outages due to overloading the network, as well as vandalism and theft of city infrastructure.

Edited by Cornelia le Roux. This article originally appeared in Pretoria Rekord and was republished with permission. Read the original article here.

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