Huge power outage continues on the East Rand
Several suburbs in Kempton Park remain in the dark,
following an explosion at a substation in Glen Marais in Ekurhuleni on Saturday
morning.
Early in the week, the City of Ekurhuleni said the power would be restored on Tuesday afternoon.
However, the metro's Head of Energy, Mark Willson, says technicians are still working around the clock to restore power in the area.
"We worked hard to meet this target; we installed a brand-new switchboard. A good practice is before we switch on, you have to test the switchboard. We did test the switchboard. Unfortunately, it did not test clean, the panels where arching," says Willson.
Willson says the city discovered that the carbon left from the fire caused the panels to arch.
"During the night (Tuesday), we managed to do a better clean up and we got these panels ready to be tested this morning. So far we tested four of these panels, and they tested clean this morning."
The metro hopes to continue testing and cleaning up panels through the day on Wednesday.
Willson believes power could be fully restored by Thursday night.
"It is a massive impact because it is a large substation; the impact is about four-and-a-half suburbs. There are quite a few hundreds of clients sitting with power, and it is not a couple of houses."
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