Unexpected power outage follows City Power miscommunication error
Customers who depend on the Brynorth Substation were left inconvenienced by an unexpected power outage on July 6, maintenance having been scheduled to take place on July 7.
City Power has issued an apology to customers who receive their power supply from the Brynorth substation following a grievous miscommunication.
A planned outage had been initially communicated to take place on July 7, however, residents across Ward 106 (including a small portion of Bryanston in Ward 103) spent most of July 6, without electricity – with power supply returning to some residents at as late as 20:00.
The affected area is spread across Region B such as Petervale, and Bryanston.
City Power tweeted a #RandburgUpdate, stating, “The restoration process started at 15:36, but smoke started coming out from one of the income breakers. The team is investigating the cause. Estimated time-of-return is 18:30, should all go according to plan.”
City Power apologised for the delay and inconvenience, urging that customers maintain caution – and ‘treat their electricity supply points as live at all times’, towards the crisis becoming dealt with swiftly.
“I have requested City Power to provide the information [regarding the investigation on the cause to smoke emanating from the income breaker],” said Ward 106 councillor Christopher Santana, who was unable to provide further information on July 7.
Senior citizens and locals who work from home in the affected regions were most impacted. Local pensioner, Zodwa Mkalipe laments that the garden assistant suffered the most inconvenience during the unexpected power outage.
“It was from the morning,” Mkalipe said. “He was inconvenienced because he couldn’t make any tea.”
City Power provided a further update on July 8 at 07:50.
“The Randburg Service Delivery Centre (SDC) apologises to residents of Bryanston and surrounding areas for the prolonged outage caused by the planned maintenance at the Brynorth substation. We acknowledge the customers’ frustration, and apologise for the inconvenience caused,” said spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
“Residents were informed that the power supply will be off from 08:00–16:00,” Mangena continued. “The restoration process commenced at 15:35, however, due to a fault on the incomer breaker coil causing smoke to come from the breaker, the team could not continue with the restoration process.
“The team had to open the breaker, investigate what was causing the smoke, fix the coil, and then resume with the restoration process,” Mangena elaborated in the statement issued. “At 19:20, the operators resumed the restoration process, and at 20:00, 11 distributors were restored. Due to the high load on the network, the restoration process had to be done gradually to avoid the power supply from tripping. Thereafter, the team could only load one distributor every hour.
“The power supply was fully restored on July 6, at 22:30.”
The planned outage on July 7 was carried out as expected.
Related article:
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/330907/power-outages-hit-chronically-ill-particularly-hard/
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/330683/will-hurlingham-feeder-1-be-repaired/
