What was intended to be a seamless repair job on an oil leak has left the intersection on the corner of Peter Place and Old Kilcullen Road in Bryanston fairly vulnerable for almost six months.
In a written response, Eskom’s media desk said that it was forced to switch off a high voltage cable feeding between the Craighall and Bryanston substation in August last year after an oil leak was identified.
“Cable leakages are normally caused by construction activities on the road such as road extensions, drilling underground to instal other services like water, building on top of the cable, etc.”
Once work to repair the cable commended in September, teams encountered a number of challenges, including the draining of excess of ‘1 000 litre of water a day over a span of 12 days’.
A more significant challenge was the identification of a second leak on a second cable that runs underneath a boundary wall of a private property on Old Kilcullen Road.
“Due to challenges experienced such as oil shortages and unplanned discovery work, the scope of the project changed,” said the media desk.
Once an agreement between Eskom and the private property owner was reached and teams finally had the opportunity to inspect the extent of the damage on the second cable, two water pipe leaks were found along the boundary wall, bringing work to a standstill once again.
Eskom is currently waiting on City entity Johannesburg Water to repair the water pipe leaks, until then its teams cannot work on the cable.
Ward 102 councillor David Potter is concerned that with the failure of two major high voltage cables, extreme strain has been placed on the power grid from Eskom and City Power.
“It is imperative that Eskom repairs both these Craighall-Bryanston high voltage feeder cables to bring stability and redundancy of load back to the supply area,” said Potter.
In addition to the approach of the winter months, there was recently a major electricity failure that occurred on the morning of January 18, affecting Bryanston and the surrounding areas for most of the day.
While the large power failure on January 18 was not the result of the repairs currently underway, the Eskom media desk would like to reassure the community that the repairs will not significantly impact the grid. “Eskom has two additional back-feeding points of supply for the Bryanston substation should a fault occur.”
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