Observatory substation repairs '40% completed' - City Power
City Power on Monday said it had completed 40% of the repairs at the Observatory substation, east of Johannesburg.
The substation was gutted by fire on Saturday morning.
The fire interrupted power supply to customers in Bellevue, Bellevue East, Bruma, Cyrildene De Wetshof, Houghton Estate, Kensington, Linksfield Ridge, Malvern, Observatory, Observatory Ext, Troyeville Yeoville and surrounding areas.
The utility’s spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, says despite the progress, full power is only likely to be restored by Saturday.
"We are still on track to restore full power supply to all affected customers within the committed seven days. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the outage disrupting the lives of the residents in the area. City Power is committed to ensuring that the power is restored."
Mangena explained that the suspected faulty spot of the 88kv oil-filled cable had been identified, and trenching to expose the faulty cable had also been completed.
"Protection control cable termination, relay installation and wiring process are also continuing on-site, and it is almost complete. Testing of the relays will start later today (Monday). Part of the restoration plan is to lay new cables from Observatory Substation to Bellevue Substation, and trenching has started this morning (Monday).
“The further testing of the cable to do the final verification and the flush-out of the contaminated oil (which may take days) is part of the work to be done on Monday.”
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