Power restored to Greenhills
'We are looking at approximately R2 million worth of damages'.
The explosion was as a result of theft – thieves stole among others, two neutral earthing compensators. They stole the two vital components while Eskom and municipal workers were fixing damages to electricity lines caused by lightning.
After they fixed the damage, they switched the electricity back on which caused an explosion at the substation because the neutral earthing component was absent.
“Municipal workers have worked around the clock in order to restore electricity to affected areas and managed to do so on Saturday,” Lucky Chiya, spokesperson for the Randfontein Executive Mayor said.
In addition to this, he says, “The electricity is on for now. We have used temporary measures to get the electricity back on but we still have to quantify the damages. We are looking at approximately R2 million worth of damages.”
When asked about security measures in order to prevent future incidents such as the explosion, he said, “We are looking at putting up security at all our substations – we are currently in negotiations. We do have alarms at our power stations and this will just be a means to beef-up security.”
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