Metro officials visit Blesbok substation

Local stakeholders recently held an oversight visit to the Blesbok substation to look into a way forward for the metro’s electricity woes.

Ward 92 councillor Leanne de Jager, who was part of the visit, said they wanted to “investigate and ascertain the current situation” at the station and the “challenges” it posed to residents of Queenswood, Moregloed, Waverley and surrounding areas.

Ward 84 councillor Juanita du Plooy was also part of the visit along with several other officials.

The Queenswood-based sub-station powers ward 84 residents and surrounding areas and was not spared from the pylon outage this past Sunday.

Corporate and shared services MMC Kingsley Wakelin said that power has been restored to most of the ward since then.

“We are happy to announce that we have restored power to most of our residents in Ward 84. We still have four mini-substations, however, which are still down and we have dispatched a team to energize them,” Wakelin said.

The stakeholders say that they are currently meeting to discuss long-term plans to avoid such problems in future.

Utilities and regional operations MMC Themba Fosi said a technical team meeting was held after the visit on April 12.

“Among our plans is refurbishing this old infrastructure. We must understand that technology evolves with time; the newer, the better, the more efficient. We will try our best to make sure that money is invested into this refurbishment and that our residents receive the services promised,” Fosi said.

Since the collapse on April 9, the metro has announced that most areas were back on the grid last night, except for a few network “challenges” encountered during the switching back.

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