Pretoria - The weekend's continued rainfall and lightning interrupted work done by the City to restore Mooikloof Substation, after it caught fire two weeks ago.
This was a huge inconvenience to the City’s team, as Executive Mayor Randall Williams said technicians had, by Saturday morning, done six months worth of work in just nine days, to restore electricity to the areas under the sub-station’s supply network.
Spokesperson Hilgard Matthews said: “Lightning, in particular, is very dangerous during the energisation process. There are grave risks in handling high voltage cables during these conditions, and the teams have to wait until it is safe for them to continue.
“Section A remains ready for its commissioning to begin gradual restoration of power to approximately 60% of affected households during the course of the day.
“In Section B, the teams were able to continue their work in spite of the rain. The work at Section C progressed well. The process of terminating cables on the panels is ongoing. Lower busbars were installed and top busbars were expected to be completed over the weekend,” he said yesterday.
He said the teams were ready to begin commissioning Section A to ensure gradual restoration of power to the affected areas. The sub-station stopped generating electricity on Wednesday December 1, when it burnt during a thunder storm, leaving large parts of Pretoria East without power.
Yesterday marked day 12 of the sub-station failing to generate adequate power, and, during a visit to the sub-station to monitor progress on Friday afternoon, Williams said: “Just to put it into perspective, to refurbish a sub-station normally takes six months. What we have done is to condense that job by making available all the possible resources in the City to rebuild the sub-station within nine days.
“There are three sections in this sub-station. Section A controls the panels that provide electricity to about 60% of this area, that fall under Mooikloof substation. Section B is what we call the control panels. These are the panels that control the substation, and then Section 4 are the panels that provide electricity to the remaining 40% of the sub-station's distribution network.
“As far as Section A is concerned, we are about 90% complete. We are busy just finalising the last of the cabling. Once that has been done we will start with the testing and the commissioning to restore power to 60% of this area, in a phased approach so that we do not overload the substation."
He said Section B was about 95% complete, while Section C was 80% complete.
On the latest update yesterday, Matthews said by yesterday afternoon a phased approach of switching on would be taking place, which will see gradual restoration to some areas into the evening.
Targeted areas included Shongwezi, Woodhill Estate, The Wilds Estate, Mooikloof Estate, Pretoria East Hospital, Parts of Pretorius Park, and remaining parts of Moreleta Park.
“The City of Tshwane thanks residents for their continued patience. Our teams are doing all they can to ensure they work safely and complete the rebuild as quickly as possible,” said Matthews.
Pretoria News