LOAD shedding for Johannesburg residents kicked in promptly after 6pm on Monday night after Eskom announced Stage 2 power cuts for the country.
But for parts of the south west of Johannesburg, they have been plunged into darkness for much of Monday after strong winds caused a 88kV pylon to collapse in the area.
City Power said it was looking into filing criminal charges as it believed cable theft was responsible for weakening the structure, leading to the collapse.
Meanwhile, City Power and Eskom also met on Sunday to clear out confusion over Johannesburg's intention to not load shed residents after the city signed a deal to procure power directly from the privately owned Kelvin Power Station.
It was agreed that Johannesburg would load shed like the rest of the country and the City Power had to withdraw it's statement wherein it had sought to spare residents from Stage 1 and Stage 2 loadshedding.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena could not be reached by phone on Monday, but he said in a statement that officials were working around the clock after “Vandalism caused the electricity pylon to collapse”.
“City Power teams are attending to an outage affecting most of the south west of Johannesburg.
“The outage happened after the collapse of 88 kV pylon tower which was blown by the strong wind.
“The pylon fell between Nancefield and Nirvana substation. Fortunately no one was injure,” he said.
Mangena said they wanted to pursue the matter criminally.
“We have requested a criminal investigation to be launched as we believe the pylon was weakened by vandalism by criminals that this affects power supply,” he said, adding that affected areas included Nancefield, Eldorado Park, Klipsruit West, Nancefield Industrial, Nirvana, Lenasia, Lenasia Clinic, Trade Route Mall and the Ahmed Kathrada Hospital.
“The team is on site to attend to this while we believe we will be able to restore power to Nancefield substation this evening through backfeeding Nirvana station will remain off until repairs are done. “Unfortunately currently we cannot see when repairs will be done and power report restored. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this,” he said.
Parts of Joburg currently being load shed between 8pm and 10pm include Northcliff, Craighall, Windsor, Sharonlea, Robindale, Yeoville, Bryanston, Cyrildene Houghton and Modderfontein.
Meanwhile, Eskom said earlier that it had implemented load shedding three hours before the expected 9pm as the Unit 1 at Kusile, Unit 5 at Matimba had tripped, leading to a loss over over 1300 MW.
IOL