New substation for residents

City Power apologised to Lakeside Village residents for the blackout which was caused after a substation exploded on July 2.

City Power spokesperson, Mr Sol Masola, said one of the switches at the old substation in Lakeside Village exploded, causing the fire which left residents without power for more than 18 hours.

The NEWS reported on July 15 that an explosion at an electrical substation at the Lakeside Village in Modderfontein had left numerous residents in the dark.

Ward councillor, Clr Bongani Nkomo, said the outage was due to a transformer which exploded inside the electrical substation.

According to some residents, about a quarter of the homes in the Lakeside Village were left without power.

Residents said when a generator was finally brought in on Friday, they had to wait again as it was taken to the area without diesel.

Clr Nkomo said it was not clear what caused the explosion, however some residents claimed that it was due to lack of maintenance.

Mr Masola said, “We would like to apologise to those customers who were affected by the power loss and we promise to do all we can to ensure that we continue to provide a reliable electricity supply to our customers. It is for this reason that we have built and connected a new substation in the area.”

He said City Power decided to build a new substation adjacent to the old one because the old one was about to reach the end of its life span.

“Due to the fact that the new substation had not yet been commissioned, customers lost power supply for some time,” said Mr Masola.

“In our efforts to ensure that customers were not left without electricity after the explosion, City Power connected a diesel generator to ensure customers had electricity while we were in the process of switching the power supply from the old substation to the new one. The area is now supplied with electricity from the newly connected substation, which is more reliable and is meant to last for over 40 years,” he said.