Pretoria - Work to replace the collapsed pylons along the N4 in Pretoria east has started and work is progressing well, mayor Cilliers Brink has said.
Teams had been on the ground since Thursday assembling the new monopoles. According to Brink, the monopoles differ from pylons, in that the base is solid concrete.
The City announced that all the areas that had power outages as a result of the collapsed pylons on the N4 east freeway have been energised, except for a few network challenges encountered during switching back on.
Power has been fully restored at the Mamelodi 2 substation, except for some areas from the Hinterland substation, such as Ext 4, 5, 6, Vista View, Ikageng, Section 14, 15, Nellmaphius Ext 21 and 24, Phase 1, part of S&S and Mamelodi Ext 5. Section 12 and 13 have also been restored.
The 132kV power lines fell on the N4 freeway at around 9pm last Sunday night which resulted in a power outage affecting large parts of Pretoria east and Pretoria North. The city lost 300 megawatts of power following the incident.
At least seven power line structures collapsed and were badly damaged. Further investigations by the City found that three pylons were vandalised, which caused the power lines to collapse on to the road.
Brink said criminals were now targeting the steel that forms part of the structure, causing the towers to collapse, bringing down cables they support and causing power outages.
Meanwhile, Eskom has once again fallen victim to theft and vandalism of its electricity infrastructure in the Tshwane area, after five pylons collapsed in Hammanskraal on Monday evening. No injuries were reported relating to the incident that occurred along the R101 road and electricity supply to customers was not affected.
Plans are under way to also rebuild this infrastructure as the towers’ integrity was compromised beyond repair, said Mashangu Xivambu, maintenance and operations manager in Gauteng.
Xivambu said the theft of tower members leads to instability and collapse of pylons that carry high voltage power lines, which then poses a serious safety risk to the public and often results in the interruption of supply.
“Such criminality has a devastating impact on the economy and Eskom’s ability to sustain the provision of electricity. We are particularly concerned by the theft and vandalism of pylons, which is spreading across Gauteng.”
Pretoria News