By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The eThekwini Municipality says that electricity had been restored to most of the areas affected by an explosion at the Klaarwater major substation in Durban.
Around 50% of the households in Durban were left without power following an explosion at a major substation on Tuesday evening.
The municipality said the outage was caused by a trip out at the substation, a key supply point to the City from Eskom.
“We are therefore appealing to the members of the public to bear with us and be patient, and we are also appealing to them to not panic as our technicians are on the ground to conduct an investigation to ascertain what is the cause of this explosion,” said the municipality’s spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela.
Teams had been deployed to affected areas to restore supply to as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible, and further details would be released after the areas had been inspected.
“These inspections will cover an extensive area of overhead HV lines from the Klaarwater area as far as Waterfall in the outerwest. The strong winds and lightning around 19h00 to 20h30 appear to have been the primary cause of the faults, but this cannot be confirmed 100% at this stage. We can confirm that the supply has been restored to all substations, with the exception of Shallcross,” said Mayisela.
Meanwhile, ailing parastatal Eskom is expected to provide an update on the national grid after it implemented load shedding on Sunday.
The parastatal initially suspended deliberate power cuts, but it was no surprise when it was reinstated 24 hours later.
The power utility said stage 2 load shedding would be implemented from 4pm to midnight from Monday to Wednesday.