What happens when a substation explodes, leaving a whole neighborhood (well most of it anyway) in the dark for an unspecified period of time..???

EVERYONE else gets full-time electricity!

Quote:
Millions of Rands damage was caused on Friday afternoon when oil-based circuit breakers in an electricity substation exploded due to power surges caused by load shedding.

The whole of Walmer and surrounding areas are currently without power, and while staff will be working around the clock to restore power to the affected areas as soon as possible, some areas, including the Walmer Park shopping centre may be without electricity until some time on Saturday the 19th April 2008. (its now the 21st and still no joy as far as I know)

A Municipal employee, who was at the substation, was lucky to escape serious injury as he had just left the substation when the explosion happened. (Sabotage??)

It is believed that the fact that the circuit breakers are not designed to be switched on and off at the regular intervals as had been done because of the current load shedding, caused the explosion.

It is hoped that certain of the affected areas can be linked up with other supply cables close by, but it will not be possible to do this for all the affected areas. This means that the remaining areas will be left without electricity, most probably until today.

Load shedding which would have happened for the rest of Friday and Saturday in Nelson Mandela Bay has been cancelled as a result of the explosion.

So let me get this straight...

These geniuses (blatant sarcasm) over at Eskom have happily started load-shedding all over the show with out bothering to check if:

A.) The equipment can handle it.
B.) There are safe guards in place to prevent damage to their existing infrastructure.
C.) With out setting up fall-back/ contingency plans incase of damages caused by the load-shedding itself?

Have they never head of something called, IMPACT STUDIES and FEASIBILITY PLANS?!

God damn it all to hell!

The incompetence of these people...!

Impact what? oh it impacts their wallet that they not getting 20billion bonus!

feedmybelly plans? of course they know about that one! Look at how all their pork bellies!

the rest of SA can go to hell whilst they'll take 4 years to get some plan to build some sufficient power stations... Personally this whole loadshedding crap is a farce to put the consumers at ransom and demand for more money to fund their pork bellies!

Indeed, I've heard rumours that Eskom doesn't actually need to load-shed, thye're just doing it to f#ck with us and Guvment.

Bastards!

same thing happened in my area yesterday :-( substation blew up....

I think we will see a lot more of that happening during winter

well think about it? if Eskom says they need to load shed so that means there's a increase in Demand... now because they can't/refuse keep up with the supply the demand becomes greater hence drives up prices... hence why they want the 50% increase in Tarriffs...

I bet you we wouldn't get much load shedding if they got their 50% increase!

Maybe so, but a price increase will also motivate you to save, right?

I was speaking to an electrical engineer who works for city power last night and if load shedding continues we will see a lot more of this happening.

The breakers were designed to be shut down once or twice a year, not day. It's having a serious impact on all the equipment.

I thought as much, also the constant startup load on the transformers has to shorten it's life span, not to mention all the household apliances going poof with the "inrush current"

Yeah man, one of the plug points in my house exploded out the wall and trashed my heater when the power was switched back on.

Now before I leave for work at 10am (which is when load-shedding starts in my area) I switch off all the plug points that have appliances attached. I've switched off the ones that we don't use aswell, just incase.

That is the best thing you can do, but one cant leave the fridge off for the day, I have heard from at least 3 family members that their fridges went....

who here is surprised ?

NO 1 hehehe....