Load shedding puts strain on City Power system

Eskom has been implementing rolling blackouts across the country and is expected to continue until 11pm on Saturday night.

Power lines, electricity, load shedding. Image: Pexels.

Bonga Dlulane | 44 days ago

JOHANNESBURG – Johannesburg City Power says load shedding is putting heavy strain on its system.

Eskom has been implementing rolling blackouts across the country and is expected to continue until 11pm on Saturday night.

The power utility says load shedding is necessary in order to avoid a collapse of its strained system.

City power's Isaac Mangena says there's a number of new faults.

“We have a situation where we are experiencing in surge in current and our network is not able to handle that, and it explodes. There is equipment failure and you find that some people who have been load shed not receiving electricity after the restoration because of such problems.”

City Power is aware of some areas that experience/d problems after restorations after Loadshedding.

We urge customers who experience outages while they are not scheduled for #Loadshedding to log a call on 0860562874 so that we can attend to the fault.
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) December 7, 2019

#Brynorthupdate More teams have been roped in to clean & do tests, the isolating team will begin with the isolation of the damaged equipment, once the extent of the damage is determined repairs and reconstruction of the equipment will begin, ETR is not available at this point^GR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) December 7, 2019

The utility says power supply in several suburbs has been affected by an explosion at the Brynorth substation.

The City says a feeder board blew up, which caused significant damage to the substation.

Bryanston, Morningside and Douglasdale are some of the affected areas.

Mangena said they are working to restore power to the affected suburbs, and called on residents to alert them if there are others.

“We urge the customers who experience such outages, while they are not scheduled for load shedding, to log a call with us so that we can send technicians.”

Timeline

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