Second fire of the year at JVA substation damages 40 MVA transformer

What happened

At about 6.30pm on 19 August 2020 a fire at the JVA substation in the City of Ekurhuleni, South Africa, damaged a 40 MVA transformer and left businesses and residents without power. Areas reported as affected were New Era industrial, Fulcrum, Dal Fouche, Pollak Park and Reedville. It was the second fire at the substation in 2020. After an earlier fire in February 2020 it took 17 days to restore supply, and businesses reported having spent more than R10 million during that outage.

The city manager visited the substation the next morning to assess the damage, and the City of Ekurhuleni said it was engaging several parties, including Eskom, for urgent help to restore supply. The municipality said it was not obliged to replace damaged goods or food. The cause of the August fire was not reported.

Contributing factors

Not reported. The substation had already been damaged by a fire in February 2020.

Lessons learned

1. A second fire at the same substation within months points to an unresolved cause, so a root cause investigation should be completed and acted on before equipment is returned to service.
2. Long restoration times after a transformer loss cause large business losses; holding or sharing spare transformers, or arranging mobile units, shortens outages.
3. Agreements with the transmission operator or other utilities for emergency help should be in place before a failure, not negotiated after it.

Source

citizen.co.za