Kloofsig residents assured power before Christmas
“Power supply to the affected residents will be re-routed from the nearby Barnard Park substation and will be done gradually to avoid system overload.”
Some 2 400 customers affected by the outage, caused by a fire that broke out at kloofsig substation in Centurion on Wednesday, have been promised power before Christmas, as per the Tshwane metro.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the metro’s current intent was to liven 33 components which each carried an average of 50 customers.
Bokaba said the Tshwane’s energy and electricity regional teams were on track to have the power restored by midday today.
“After the Kloofsig substation caught fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning, which led to the outage that affected Lyttleton and Kloofsig suburbs, teams from head office and the region were hastily assembled and swiftly cobbled together a brilliant recovery plan.”
He said extensive work, which involved excavation, procurement of new equipment, identification and termination of cables as well as a series of pressure testing of cables, was carried out in record time at the Kloofsig and Barnard Park substations.
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The time to run tests and place new infrastructure, consequently led to the restoration of some of the affected areas early this morning.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t restore all consumers’ power during this process as our equipment experienced some technical glitches.”
Bokaba said a testing team was dispatched from the Barnard substation to run tests on the cables that had faults between Fountains and Unitas.
“Once the cables have been isolated, the switching team will begin to finalise switching arrangements to gradually commence with power restoration, taking on board the remaining consumers. This process is expected to be completed by midday today.”
This follows the metro promising to bring back about 1 650 customers onto the grid on Thursday.
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Bokaba said the metro planned to then move with speed to complete the jointing of the outstanding two cables, after which the remaining 750 customers would be energised later on Thursday night.
The substation plunged the areas of Kloofsig and Lyttelton into darkness earlier this week.
“We humbly request residents to switch off all appliances, including geysers, ahead of the anticipated power restoration.
“You can switch the appliances back on after one hour following the restoration.”
Bokaba said investigations were yet to get underway to determine the cause of the fire at the Kloofsig substation.
Update on Kloofsig and Barnard Park substations by @Selbybok pic.twitter.com/sm1VWRFS7M
— City of Tshwane (@CityTshwane) December 24, 2021
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