By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
City Power has confirmed that power has been restored at the Eikenhof substation after one of the feederboards experienced a flash-over (an electric discharge over or around the surface of an insulator) on Monday, March 4.
A flash-over on Monday evening- caused a power outage and water interruptions over large parts of Johannesburg, as well as on the West Rand and in the North West.
Power utility had to dismantle the feederboard where the flashover occured to do the repairs and pressure-test it before restoration can start.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena says the second feeder board passed the tests around 10:30pm on Tuesday evening and has been successfully energized.
“Rand Water was informed at 23h00 to take the full load to pump water to its customers. Already, by early afternoon, Rand Water was pumping at 50% capacity after our teams managed to restore the first feeder board.
“Eikenhof substation experienced total loss of supply following a flash-over incident on one of the feeder boards on Monday evening. The flash-over happened as the teams were busy with the normalisation of the infrastructure following the Planned Maintenance between Orlando and Eikenhof substations over the weekend.”
He adds that the cause of the incident is still being investigated.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this incident. We thank the team of dedicated technicians from City Power who worked hard throughout the day and night since the incident was reported and, without the help of contractors, managed to conduct all the tests and execute the repairs until power was eventually restored.”