Power restored to Observatory and surrounds but Upper Houghton, Yeoville still affected

After more than 12 days without electricity, Johannesburg's City Power has managed to restore power in large parts of Observatory and surrounding areas, but some neighbouring suburbs are still affected by another fault. 

Residents were plunged into darkness on December 2 when the Observatory substation caught alight, leaving several suburbs feeding off the substation without power.    

Supply was interrupted in Bellevue, Bellevue East, Cyrildene, Houghton Estate, Kensington, Linksfield Ridge, Observatory, Observatory Ext, Yeoville and surrounding areas. 

Residents were confronted with high crime incidents and had to throw away rotten food.  

The restoration took longer than expected as the entity had to lay new cables from the Observatory substation to the Bellevue substation.

Observatory resident Samora Ntsebeza said electricity was back on in the suburb.  

City Power, however, said on Thursday Grafton remained off after restoration at Bellevue substation on Wednesday due to another fault.  

“Operators are on site attending to this outage,” it said.

The latest fault has interrupted the power supply to customers in parts of Yeoville, Upper Houghton and possibly surrounding areas.  

“We appeal to customers and councillors of the [affected] areas to bear with us until we have full supply before escalating isolated individual calls for these areas. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this prolonged outage,” it said.  

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