Joburg City Power officials say they are frantically at work trying to restore electricity for thousands of frustrated Randburg residents who have not had any power since the outages started in the early hours of Monday morning.
Residents in the Randburg suburbs of Boskruin, Bromhof, Sonneglans and Northwold, have had no electricity since 3 am Monday morning.
Other areas such as Blairgowrie, Olivedale, Ferndale, Bordeaux, Northriding and others, have also been affected.
City Power has been drowning in outage complaints, with thousands fielded since Monday.
On Tuesday, as the agony of the residents continued, Phiwe Banzi, City Power’s communication officer for the Randburg Service Delivery Centre, took residents on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Randburg Substation. This has been riddled with multiple trips and outages due to theft and network overloading in some parts.
Banzi said in the substation that feeds areas such as Boskruin, Bromhof, Sonneglans and Northwold, Eskom was busy working on site after vandalism was reported on Monday and Tuesday.
The vandalism included draining thousands of litres of oil fluid from a transformer.
#OutageUpdate on Randburg, please see videos posted.^NN pic.twitter.com/M27ys7F2KW
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 11, 2023
#update on Randburg pic.twitter.com/NTlxZ9fup3
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 11, 2023
A City Power senior technician said the substation was vandalised and 10 000 litres of fluid were drained from a transformer. This required Eskom to refill the transformer, which they have since done.
The technician said they were still busy fixing and replacing cables.
“It is not a quick fix, but I am sure the guys on site are doing whatever needs to be done and it will be back to normal very shortly,” they said.
In Northwold, residents reported power returned briefly for minutes before going off again around 4 pm.
City Power said in terms of replacing the stolen cables, the parts had been sourced and the teams were working to restore power.
“We are aware that the power supply tripped post-load-shedding at 16:15.
“Operators are on-site trying to restore the power supply”.
Randburg 6.6kv substation tripped, and operators struggled to maintain the power supply. The protection team has been dispatched to check the relay on the incomer.
A local councillor's phone rang unanswered.
IOL