Planned outage due to substation upgrade

POLOKWANE – Polokwane Municipality and Eskom will undertake a major maintenance project to upgrade the Silica electricity substation to capacitate it to carry more load that will ensure the city has firm and stable supply at all times. This is a necessary process to allow Eskom to energise the new transformer at Silica substation that will supply the Municipality from a new bus-bar.

The upgrading of this substation will be conducted tomorrow (Thursday) between 06:00 – 18:00. The maintenance will affect supply of electricity.

The process of upgrading the facility would normally require for a bigger part of the city to be shut off over the duration of the maintenance work. To avoid businesses and residences being shut off for a longer period, the municipality will implement a stage 3 shedding schedule during the period of maintenance. This will ensure shorter periods of down time.

The substation was constructed for purposes of providing electricity during 2010 and it is now upgraded to create a second supply point to strengthen supply to the city area.

Members of the public and residences are advised to switch off their electrical appliances and geysers during this period in order to avoid damage. Any open wires should be considered as live.