GEORGE NEWS - Load shedding, lightning, a fault on an Eskom overhead line, and a car hitting a mini-substation caused a spate of unplanned power outages that George Municipality has had to deal with during March in George and Wilderness.
Responding to a query from George Herald about the unusually high number of outages, senior communications officer Ntobeko Mangqwengqwe explained that some of the outages were as a result of load shedding.
"A distribution network is not designed to be switched on and off several times a day, which is what happens during load-shedding. This causes mechanical and electrical stress in equipment which in turn causes failures. We have had a few failures of this nature during the last load-shedding cycle."
Mangqwengqwe said another factor they had to contend with was a lightning storm passing through George and Wilderness on the evening of 11 March, damaging the city's overhead infrastructure.
"Also, two prolonged outages were experienced, one of which was caused when a motor vehicle hit a mini-substation in Pacaltsdorp. The mini-substation had to be completely replaced."
The whole of Wilderness also experienced a lengthy outage due to a fault on an Eskom high voltage overhead line.
"While Eskom was struggling to locate the fault, the municipality started a process of supplying Wilderness from its network. Almost 24 hours after the fault occurred, Eskom cleared the fault and energised their substation. Four hours later, the municipality reconfigured the medium voltage network to its normal operating state."
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