Last month, the Upper Houghton Ratepayers and Residents’ Association hosted a meeting attended by City Power’s officials and Observatory and Yeoville residents to address the continuous power disruption at the Observatory and Bellevue substations.
Challenges at the two substations emanated from a fire at the Observatory substation which caused severe damage to the control room which also affected the Bellevue substation in December 2023.
City Power’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the power entity presented a comprehensive plan last month for repairs and reinstatement of the two substations to their original state.
“Given the intense nature of the work requiring a multidisciplinary approach, we estimated that the entire project could take up to 12 months to complete.”
Progress made on repairs and reinstatement of the two substations are as follows.
Observatory substation
- A third transformer is being commissioned to have a backup supply.
- Transformer service is complete.
- Testing complete and passed.
- Medium voltage (MV) terminations are in progress.
- Temporary measures are converted to permanent solutions in phases.
- The appointment of the service provider to carry out this work is in progress and will be completed end of April.
Bellevue substation
- The faulty 88kv oil cable will be repaired as a short-term solution.
- City Power is still on track for three weeks’ predictions, the power utility is still working on locating an oil leak and we have narrowed the section down to 500m.
- City Power will update residents as soon as it is located and all other repairs are complete.
Based on this information from the service provider, the service delivery centre (SDC) anticipates the following:
- If the leak is minor, repairs could be completed within a short period.
- If the leak is major, the service provider will advise on the turnaround time.
- Restoration process and time are not factored into the above turnaround time.
- All old oil cables between the Observatory and Bellevue substations will be replaced with XLPE cables as a long-term solution.
- The planning phase for the installation of new 88kv cables has started
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