City Power’s capital programme expansion and refurbishment has undergone extensive upgrades to cater to the city’s current and future electricity needs.
According to the spokesperson for City Power, Yumna Sheik, the city is growing at a rapid rate due to the migration of the population from peri-urban to urban areas. “This is the reason City Power has to keep up with increasing demand and replace ageing equipment.
“The refurbishment and upgrades on the three substations at Roodepoort (Roodepoort), Cydna (Melrose) and Nirvana (Lenasia), respectively, are one of the ways City Power is working at mitigating power outages and combating energy losses while securing power supply,” Sheik said.
He added that the capital investment into Roodepoort’s new substation is worth approximately R128 million as it is the only substation out of the three to be constructed anew.
“The station will operate at 3 x 45 MVA, 88/11kV with 600m 88kV double circuit lines travelling from Roodetown substation to the new Roodepoort station. Roodepoort’s new substation has installed 2 x 20MVA 11/6.6kV power transformers to replace the existing 3 x10 MVA 33/6.6kV transformers at the existing 33/6.6kV substation. The existing Roodepoort substation is a high voltage plant supplying residents in Johannesburg’s West Rand with new customers added to the existing load,” Sheik said.
He further said that in addition to the capital project programme, upgrades have been implemented at Cydna and Nirvana. The Cydna substation supplies Birdhaven, Melrose and Athol Oakloands areas respectively at a power-generating capacity of 4 x 45 MVA.
“The new design will cater for more operational options with both 88kV lines connected on the busbar in addition to the two Rosebank 88kV cables. An additional benefit of the upgrades is customers fed from Alexandra substation can be back-fed from Cydna, which will minimise the occurrences of outages in those areas. The total budget for the project was R91 million,” explained Sheik.
The managing director of City Power, Sicelo Xulu said, “These projects came through as a measure to remedy power losses and enhance development in surrounding areas. Maintenance and refurbishment of the substations over the medium and long term is an inevitable process we intend on following for the preservation of our infrastructure and networks.
“The maintenance plan also provides a good opportunity for us to retain some of the staff complement used for these building projects. Approximately 300 jobs were created from the three projects over the three-year building process. At present, construction has been completed on all three sites, once the functionality tests are complete, operations can begin,” he said.
Securing the sites from theft and vandalism continues to be a high priority for City Power. “To reduce the frequency of criminal activity on site, mini-subs supplying streetlights on main arterials remain encased in steel cages in all substations. Some of the targeted cable circuits have been replaced with aluminium,” Xulu said.
