After the repairs from the fire that began at the Eldorado Park substation on Friday 15 April, Eskom predicted that it could restore power to affected areas by Wednesday 20 April. However, while reconnecting the Joburg substation units on Wednesday a fault caused a transformer to explode. This transformer blow-up is very likely to result in another week of power cuts for Johannesburg.
The Eldorado Substation Fire
During the early hours on Friday 15 April, a fire broke out at the Eldorado substation in Johannesburg. The fire caused several more substations to trip, including Orlando, Fordsburg, Pennyville, Mayfair, Mondeor, Nirvana, Nancefield, and Eikenhof. Although teams have since repaired many of the substations.
Technicians remained on-site throughout the night on Friday in order to investigate. Hoping to repair the station as quickly as possible. Once technical teams had assessed the situation, Eskom informed the public that it should have repairs completed and power restored by Wednesday 20 April.
By the afternoon of Tuesday 19 April repairs were well under away. But unfortunately, when it came to reconnection time on Wednesday afternoon, a fault caused the first two transformers to trip causing a blow-up of the secondary transformer. This caused power cuts in the Johannesburg areas of Freedom Park, Mpumelelo and parts of Devland.
How long will this Johannesburg power cut last?
City Power has released a statement outlining the two scenarios that lie before the technical teams.
In the best-case scenario, technical teams will be able to repair the transformer on-site. This will allow for repairs to be completed within 24 hours and power to be restored by Friday 22 April.
Worst case scenario, technicians will have to disconnect the transformer and move it to another substation where they can drain it of oil and repair it. In this case, they will bring in a replacement transformer. Technicians will then connect the replacement transformer, fill it with oil and test it before the team can switch it on. At most this process will take seven days to complete.
For now, it appears that technical teams are recommending the worst-case scenario. Although the course of action is yet to be confirmed.