City Power still working to restore power to Joburg East
City Power technicians worked through the night on Christmas to try and restore electricity supply to the east of Johannesburg.
A fire at the Cleveland substation left many residents without power on Christmas.
In a statement issued on Thursday, City Power's Isaac Mangena said technicians had completed the connection and commissioning of a new transformer at Cleveland substation "and should have electricity fully restored by early afternoon Thursday. "
"We have had teams stationed at the substation since the fire broke out on Tuesday night plunging several suburbs such as Benrose, Denver, Malvern, Jeppestown, Kensington, and Heriotdale into darkness," said Mangena.
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He says a new standby transformer was commissioned and tested positively on Christmas day with the hope of energizsng it and restoring power before the end of Christmas day.
"However, for oil to soak in and have the transformer carry the load took longer than expected," he explains.
"We anticipate that the new transformer will be ready by early afternoon today on Thursday, after which power will gradually be restored to the residents."
He added: "At any given time, Cleveland substation runs at full capacity with two transformers. When one caught fire on Tuesday, the substation lost half supply load, leaving one transformer to service 50% of the customers. So the substation was not completely 100 per cent lost after the incident.
"We are happy with the progress made by the team who spent sleepless nights at the substation since Tuesday. We are glad that we will still be able to restore power earlier than we thought," said City Power CEO Lerato Setshedi.
"We apologise that some residents were forced to have Christmas in darkness due to this unfortunate incident."
Investigations into the cause of the fire are still continuing and the damaged transformer has been isolated and removed.
#ClevelandOutage #Update
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) December 26, 2019
A new standby transformer was commissioned and tested positively on Christmas day with the hope of energizing it and restore power before end of Christmas day.
However for oil to soak in and have the transformer carry the load took longer than expected. pic.twitter.com/de9FFHVOHc
#ClevelandOutage #Update
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) December 26, 2019
We have had teams stationed at the substation since the fire broke out on Tuesday night plunging several suburbs such as Benrose, Denver, Malvern, Jeppestown, Kensington, Heriotdale into darkness. pic.twitter.com/VLJOHdUuLs