Power will possibly be restored this afternoon
There has now been a change of plan because the technical team will only conclude the final tests this morning.
City Power spokesperson, Sol Masolo, has announced that the tests which are being run on the temporary mobile unit have taken longer than expected. Should the mobile unit pass all major tests, the entity will be able to switch on power to all affected customers later this afternoon.
On Friday, 13 April, a 33KV cable which links two substations was stolen causing major damage to several transformers at the Sentraal substation. The damage, together with the stolen cable resulted in a power interruption affecting several suburbs in the Roodepoort area.
Also Read: Update on the power outage
“In our efforts to reduce the impact of the power interruption on our customers, we embarked on a four-hourly load rotation system to supply electricity to all affected customers.
This we did while simultaneously replacing the stolen cable, damaged transformers and also repairing transformers that could be repaired. Yesterday, 16 April, we reported that we were in the process of installing a temporary mobile unit which would assist us to supply power to all affected areas while doing the repairs. We also reported that we would be running tests on the unit and that once the unit passes all technical tests we would connect it to the grid and supply electricity to customers,” said Masolo.
According to Masolo, the entity initially estimated that they could complete the technical tests last night and reconnect electricity to all affected customers this morning (17 April). Unfortunately, these plans have had to be changed because the technical team will only conclude the final tests this morning. At the moment, the unit has gone through all the major tests and should pass the remaining tests, enabling the entity to restore power to all affected customers by later this afternoon.
The affected communities are urged to switch off all non-essential appliances to contribute to saving electricity and to report all incidents of cable theft and vandalism of the electricity network to the nearest police station or to the City Power crime line: 011 490 7911/ 7504/ 7900 or the toll-free number, 0800 002 587.
For isolated individual outages, please log a call at citypower.mobi or call 0860 562 874
Do you perhaps have more information pertaining to this story? Email us at roodepoortrecord@caxton.co.za (remember to include your contact details) or phone us on 011 955 1130.
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