Waltloo substation fire causes 12-day blackout in Tshwane

What happened

A fire at the Waltloo substation in Tshwane, South Africa, on 29 September left residents in Murrayfield, parts of Silverton, Meyerspark, East Lynne and surrounding areas without power for more than 12 days. A local ward councillor said the outage was a municipal failure rather than load-shedding. He alleged that the City of Tshwane had failed to maintain the Njala, Waltloo and other substations, and that standby transformers had not worked as designed.

He urged residents to lodge claims for lost food, appliances and business stock. The city said each claim would be assessed on its merits under the law of delict, that claims must be made within six months, and that submitting a claim does not guarantee compensation. The article does not report injuries, the technical cause of the fire, or the total cost of losses.

Contributing factors

Allegations by a local councillor that substations were not adequately maintained and that standby transformers did not operate as designed. The city has not confirmed these allegations in the article, and the source gives no technical cause of the fire.

Lessons learned

1. Maintain substation equipment, including thermal condition monitoring and fire protection, on a documented schedule.
2. Test standby and redundant transformers under load so that failover is proven before a fault occurs.
3. Keep a restoration plan with spare transformers and pre-agreed switching procedures so that outages are shortened from days to hours.
4. Publish timely updates on cause and restoration to reduce disputes over compensation claims.

More lessons on detection and monitoring, worker safety and safe systems of work, from every incident on the register.

Source

citizen.co.za