Rosebank substation fire cuts power across Johannesburg suburbs

What happened

A substation at Rosebank in Johannesburg, South Africa, caught fire at around 21:00 on 17 November 2023. City Power was responding to an outage at the site when the fire broke out. The reported result was a total loss of power to customers in Rosebank, Hyde Park, Houghton Estate, Parktown and the surrounding areas. Johannesburg Emergency Services (EMS) said no injuries were reported. City Power said feeder board No. 3 would remain off until repairs were completed and that it would give further updates once repair work began. The source does not give the cause of the fire, the equipment damaged, or the date on which power was restored.

Contributing factors

The source does not state the cause of the fire. It does not say which equipment failed or whether the fire was linked to the outage that City Power was responding to.

Lessons learned

1. Substation fires can remove supply across several suburbs at once, so operators should document feeder isolation and alternative supply routes so that customers can be restored around a damaged board.
2. Give customers staged, dated updates through several channels while repairs are under way.
3. Record the failed equipment and the probable cause promptly, so that the fault can be checked against switchgear maintenance and inspection records across the network.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

citizen.co.za