R3 million infrastructure improvement in Brixton following City Power substation fire

Isaac Mangena, spokesperson for the entity said while the fire was deeply regretable, it gave City Power a reason to upgrade and replace aging infrastructure.

June 27, 2023

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City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena was on site to monitor the progress of installing the new equipment. Photo: Emily Wellman Bain.

Last week a City Power transformer substation (TSS) caught fire on Ripley Road in Brixton causing an outage for several days in nearby streets.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said while the fire had caused difficulties for residents affected by the multi-day break in electricity supply, it did give the entity a reason to replace and upgrade ageing infrastructure.

A look inside an often unseen underground electrical cable that feeds power from the substation to the nearby community. Photo: Emily Wellman Bain

“Being installed is one Ring Main Unit [RMU] and two 550KVA mini-substations which should stabilise supply in the area which is fed from the Hursthill substation.”

It is within the RMU that the infamous ‘trip switch’, which is so often spoken about when suburbs trip following load-shedding, is housed and is activated when a substation is overloaded to prevent a fire.

Locating incoming electrical cables needed to be identified and isolated before installing the new equipment. Photo: Emily Wellman Bain

“We don’t yet know what caused the fire, but it looks like the TSS may have become overloaded and burst into flames. A report will be released as soon as conclusive results are in.”

The new R3-million equipment will not be housed in the burnt-out chamber but rather under a new structure with the old chamber being possibly demolished in the coming weeks. Mangena said the new systems were less likely to be tampered with by vandals or cable thieves.

The old chamber that housed the transformer substation in Brixton was gutted following a fire thought to be caused by the overloading of the system. Photo: Emily Wellman Bain.

Extensive digging was undertaken to expose all the medium and low-voltage cables that run from the site into nearby streets. Extensive tests and cable jointing were carried out before connections were tested.

The multi-day project saw new foundations being placed under the new equipment with up to 12 labourers working at a time to bring power back to affected residents as quickly as possible.