Johannesburg City Power says cable theft is to blame for the power outages that have left large parts of Roodepoort on Gauteng’s West Rand in the dark since over the weekend.
A mobile transformer unit has now been installed in a bid to offer a stable power supply to the area.
Residents have been subjected to four-hour load rotation systems as technicians from the city work to fix the transformers damaged by the theft.
According to City Power’s Sol Masolo, initial estimates were that it would take 14 days to fully restore power and stop the load rotation, but now that the mobile unit was brought in, power could be restored by Tuesday morning.
“So as we are now we are running tests on the mobile unit. Should it pass the tests it means we will then use it to supply power while we are doing the permanent repair and replacement. So at the moment we’re running the test and the test will tell us whether we can use it to supply power to those areas or not. We expect to complete the tests by some time tonight going into tomorrow morning. What it means is that we will follow the rotation system until we know whether the mobile unit has passed the test or not.”
