While most City of Johannesburg residents woke up to find that their load-shedding woes would be over by 11pm tonight, 19 January, residents of several Ward 71 areas were not as lucky.
The ward residents spent most of yesterday without electricity due to cable theft, infrastructure damage and unplanned equipment breakdowns throughout the area. While technicians were able to make progress with repairing the Nursery Substation, the site of the cable theft has proved more difficult to deal with.
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The theft of a 33kV oil-filled cable in Florida caused severe damage to a breaker at the Florida North Substation. The damage has affected the power supply for City Power customers that are fed electricity from both Florida North and Florida Glen substations.
The entity has identified a repair strategy that will take them about two to three days if they do not encounter any problems. Knowing that they cannot leave Florida without power for three days, the entity has said that they will be implementing load rotations until the breakers and faulty cables have been fixed.
Power will be supplied in rotating shifts through Florida North and Florida Glen Substations, with each load rotation lasting six hours.
At 6am today, electricity was connected for customers who are supplied from Florida Glen Substation, as Florida North customers had electricity overnight. The loads will rotate again at around midday when power for the Florida North Substation is turned on and Florida Glen Substation’s power will be turned off. “We will continue like that until repairs are done,” stated Mangena.
City Power estimates that the oil cable repairs at Florida Glen Substation will be completed by late Wednesday evening, 20 January and have said that they will keep customers updated on any progress on all issues.
The affected areas are:
• Florida
• Florida North
• Florida View
• Florida Glen
• Maraisburg
• Delarey
• Whiteridge
• Industria North
City Power has apologised for the inconvenience that has been caused to residents. Updates can be found on the City Power Twitter page (@CityPowerJhb) and the Ward 70 councillor, Caleb Finn, also regularly posts updates on the ward’s Facebook page (@ward70jhb).
