Sections of Johannesburg inner city still in the dark after 11 days

Residents of sections of Johannesburg’s city centre, Newtown and Hillbrow, have been without electricity for 11 days after an underground cable fire.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the issue was first reported on August 23.

While electricity has been restored to customers supplied through the Reuven and Hursthill centres, a major outage remains at the Bree substation.

He said technicians are working to restore power.

Lesedi Motau, a student at the University of Johannesburg who lives on a tight budget, told TimesLIVE she has had to throw away food because it had spoiled.

Apart from cold-water washing, she has had to spend a lot of her time at campus to study and to charge her appliances.

“I charge my phone, my camp light, my power bank and my laptop at campus to survive the darkness,” she said.

Mangena said specialised technical teams had been brought in after the extent of the damage was assessed.

“The required replacement high-voltage cable and other materials have been delivered to the site. Technicians have completed the layering of the cables and started the jointing process,” he said.

The repairs are being done in phases because each high-voltage cable must be tested and commissioning done before being declared safe.

To restore more power to the Bree substation, teams are working to reinstate the Fordsburg-Braam feeder, which is needed to restore the fourth feeder supplying Bree.

The utility said the work had been scheduled to take about eight days and the current estimated restoration date was September 3.

This is not a guaranteed deadline, however.

“City Power cannot yet confirm the exact time at which full supply will be restored to Bree substation, as this remains dependent on the outcome of the technical work and testing now under way.”

TimesLIVE