Collapse of pylons in Tshwane: 25 areas still cut off
Tshwane still has 25 areas without electricity supply after the collapse of pylons at the weekend.
The City of Tshwane restored electricity to more suburbs on Tuesday, but large parts of the city remain in the dark.
Utility services and regional services and co-ordination member of the mayoral committee (MMC) Themba Fosi said: “The City of Tshwane has made significant progress towards the restoration of power to residents in Pretoria east and north, with new areas being energised every few hours.”
The council was communicating regularly as electricity was restored to more suburbs.
However, the damage to the Njala system was significant. While services are returning in some areas, the scale of the damage meant other areas need pylons to be rebuilt before this can be done for them.
“The city is working with internal teams and Eskom to restore electricity in a twopronged approach.
“Internally we are working to backfeed [reroute] our power supply. Externally, we are working with Eskom to replace the electricity pylons that fell over.
“We are grateful as they have brought multiple teams including one from outside Gauteng to assist,” said Fosi.
The scale of work already accomplished was significant, but he cautioned that in areas where power has been restored there could be trips as they balance the system to ensure the network can supply as many areas as possible.
“These are extreme circumstances, and we need to work together to limit the load and likelihood of further problems. There are still serious challenges remaining.”
The main task was to replace the seven damaged pylons. Fosi said they are not looking at replacing them with latticework pylons as those can take three to four months to build.
“Instead, we are looking to replace the seven pylons with two monopoles (for a total of 14 monopole pylons) and then restore the cables and go through the process of safely reenergising the network.
“We are still meeting Eskom and our suppliers to determine proper timelines, which depend on the speed at which work can be done,” he said.
Areas still affected by the outage are:
Baviaanspoort Prison; Boschkop; Bultfontein; Derdepoort (Zambezi Manor); Donkerhoek; Doornpoort; Eersterust; Glenway Estate; Kameeldrift; Koedoespoort Industrial; Leeuwfontein; Mamelodi; Montana Park; Moregloed; Pumulani; Roodepark; Sable Hills; Silverton; Sinoville; Vastfontein extension; Waltloo; Waterval; Waverley; Woodlands; and Zeekoegat.