City Power has completed another substation in Heriotdale.

The R187-million substation will boost City Power’s supply to Joburg residents and businesses.

This new substation will ensure stability is added to City Power’s grid in the City of Johannesburg.

The construction of the substation started in the 2015/16 financial year.

City of Johanneburg mayor Herman Mashaba opened the substation with MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Clr Nico de Jager and Ward 65 Clr Lindani Zulu.

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The construction of the Heriotdale Substation is a result of needed additional capacity because of constrained power supply emanated from the Cleveland Substation.

With the completion of this substation, the load that was carried by Cleveland Substation will now be shared between the two substations.

“Heriotdale Substation will supply areas on the southern side of the M2 freeway, including South Hills, Steeldale and City Deep, while Cleveland Substation will supply areas on the northern side of the freeway, such as Benrose, Denver, Jeppestown and surrounding areas,” explained Tefo Khama, City Power project manager for buckle infrastructure.

Khama said this substation will address a number of power issues that have been affecting residents and businesses in the area.

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“The new substation will add significant stability to Johannesburg’s power grid, ensuring more residents have access to electricity and a reliable supply.

“This substation addresses outages experienced by residents, businesses and industries, especially in the south-eastern parts of Johannesburg due to the age and condition of the Cleveland Substation,” said Khama.

This state-of-the-art substation is built with an inter-connectivity mechanism between itself and Cleveland Substation via an 88KV overhead line.

This provides recourse to City Power to transfer the power load from one faulty substation to the other.

This ensures speedy restoration of power to customers while the fault is attended to, thereby minimising the duration of a power outage.

“The protection and control room is fitted with Scada, direct current (DC) system and telecommunications equipment, which are very important to monitor, gather and process real-time data in order to convey messages to City Power technicians for early detection of faults on the network,” said Khama.

The said will also provide 50MVA capacity towards the repairs and renovations happening on the M2 freeway development.

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The addition of bulk infrastructure like this substation contributes significantly to reducing Joburg’s R170-billion infrastructure backlog.

De Jager said he is excited and pleased about the substation.

“The construction of this substation is part of City Power’s efforts to upgrade, build and refurbish the electricity network across the City.

“Ultimately with the aim of ensuring residents continue to receive reliable electricity supply as well as extending power supply to communities that have never had access before,” said de Jager.