Electricity outages: These are City Power’s most problematic areas

South Africa has gone well over 100 days without load shedding. However, while the country celebrates keeping the lights on, some areas getting electricity supply from City Power still grapple with power outages.

The utility’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the majority of these outages are due to equipment failures caused by ageing infrastructure.

“Other significant causes include network overload, cable theft, and vandalism. From July to mid-August, 55% of outages were due to equipment failures, while 15% were due to network overload, often resulting from illegal connections and meter tampering,” Mangena told The Citizen.

City Power areas with the most outages

The Alexandra substation and Vasco Da Gama switching station in Alexandra are the areas most prone to faults and outages.

“In the period between July to mid-August 2024 alone, the Alexandra substation had the highest number of outages, totalling 36,” said Mangena.

In Roodepoort, the Tshepisong switching station, Christiaan De Wet substation, and JG Strydom switching station had the most outages. Meanwhile, the inner city’s electricity issues come mostly from the Central, Fort, Observatory, and Bellevue substations.

In Midrand, the Allandale and Klipfontein View substations are responsible for the areas that grapple with the most outages.

Other problematic substations include:

• Lenasia – the Eldorado and Nancefield substations.
• Hursthill – the Hursthill and Rosebank substations.
• Reuven – Eikenhof and Robertsham substations.

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Open calls during electricity outages

City Power recorded more than 1 000 open calls from residents in the areas affected by the outages.

According to Mangena, the average response time for closing calls and resolving outages in each service delivery centre (SDC) is 24 hours.

However, Mangena added that this could sometimes stretch to 48 hours depending on the availabilty of resources.

From July to mid-August, Roodepoort and inner city SDCs had the highest number of open calls, with 260 and 207 respectively. Alexandra had 153 calls, Lenasia recorded 122, Hursthill had 112, Randburg had 86, and Reuven 36.

Mangena said a higher volume of open calls “does not necessarily equate to a higher proportion of confirmed outages”.

Decrease in calls and outages

From 1 July to 14 August 2024, City Power recorded 6 580 less calls than it did the previous year.

The breakdown is as follows:

• Alexandra saw a decrease from 2 784 to 2 035 calls,
• Hursthill from 5 087 to 4 597,
• Inner city from 3 937 to 2 007,
• Lenasia from 3 379 to 2 076,
• Midrand from 1 085 to 1 055,
• Randburg increased from 1 961 to 2 247,
• Reuven decreased from 3 372 to 2 671,
• Roodepoort decreased from 3 925 to 2 262.

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