System overload cause of latest power outage
Municipality says an overload on the power system caused latest outages.
LA LUCIA, Somerset Park and Sunningdale residents have been without power for most of the evenings this week with some residents attributing it to load shedding.
But eThekwini Municipality confirmed the cause for the power outages was a fault with the sub station.
Local councillor, Heinz De Boer, said eThekwini Municipality’s electricity department struggled to pin point the fault as one phase on a 11000 volt cable failed.
The department said if the total cable had failed it would have been easier to find and isolate it. Municipal workers had gone from sub to sub to find the fault and fixed it.
In reply to an inquiry by De Boer, the electricity department’s head, Roy Wienand, said there were about 60 possible points this single phasing fault could have come from and said it’s much harder to locate than a pure failure.
By 5pm on Tuesday, 8 July workers found the fault and the electricity was restored. But then, because of the load on the system, it crashed again.
Wienand explained that it’s best that when the electricity goes off that people switch off as many appliances as possible to avoid a drain on the system, which caused most of Tuesday night’s outages.
Certain Areas in Phoenix are also experiencing Power Failures. Is this related?
System over-load not surprising when we have homes (bl**dy monster mansions) in our neighbourhood such as the big white “super” lit up house on corner of Addison Dr & Morelands Dr in La Lucia (amongst others). They have enough lights on to light up a small country!! Then when power went out last night (08/07/2014) their generators kicked in within seconds and so they still had light. Huge homes like that should be penalised for their excessive power usage (wastage). Just because they can afford the bills doesn’t mean they should be allowed to abuse our overloaded power grids (this goes for all who feel they can abuse utilities because they have mega money).