THE eThekwini Municipality said that it will be expanding its electricity cable replacement programme in the upcoming financial year in an effort to improve network reliability.

This follows power supply challenges that plunged certain areas across the city into darkness from June 9-19.

These included the areas of Cowies Hill, Chiltern Hills and Westville North when a cable fault caused an almost 30 hours long power outage recently.

Also read: Cable fault cause of power outage

The municipality’s spokesperson, Gugu Sisilana, said in the recently affected areas supplied via the Blair Athol Major Substation and the Woodside/Hobson Switch Pillar 1, it should be noted that the cable route traverses private properties, which often presents access challenges and results in delays in fault restoration.

“In Hatton Estate, outages were caused by a cable fault located between Gelofte High School (4454) and Pinetown Hardware. This fault contributed to abnormal circuit conditions, leading to repeated overload trips. The issue has since been addressed, and the circuit has been normalised,” said Sisilana.

Sisilana said the municipality’s planned work will include:

•  Replacement of 3.5km of cable between Blair Athol Major Substation and Woodside/Hobson Switch Pillar 1.
•  Replacement of 3km of cable between Jung Street Distribution Substation and Pinetown Major Substation.

“These infrastructure upgrades are aimed at enhancing power supply stability for Westville, Cowies Hill, and surrounding areas,” said Sisilana.

The outage which affected Cowies Hill, Chiltern Hills and Westville North started on Tuesday, June 17, until power was restored on Wednesday, June 18 at around 19:00.

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