Plans in place to solve Salt Rock power outages

KwaDukuza municipality (KDM) has called in a team of experts to fix a fault that may have been causing months of electricity cuts in the Salt Rock, Sheffield and Fox Hill areas.

Despite KDM installing a R33 million substation in 2016, residents have been enduring constant electricity cuts that happen at least a few times a week, without warning and generally without an explanation.

DA Ward 22 councillor Malcolm Hubner said the electricity had been fairly stable for about 18 months after the substation was installed.

“The problems started about six months ago and electricians had been coming out to fix the issue but it would just reoccur.”

Last Wednesday, about 20 electricians from Durban spent the day trying to source a fault with the substation that was causing the machine to automatically switch off.

This problem is apparently due to the weather changes on the North Coast.

Also read: Weather causing intermittent power outages on Dolphin Coast

Heavy winds cause electricity cables to clash and then switch off as a precaution to prevent fire while extreme temperatures have been known to affect the transformer in the substation – an apparatus responsible for reducing or increasing the voltage.

KDM executive director for electrical engineering Sibusiso Jali told the Courier they suspect there may be a problem with the transformer.

This device is valued at about R4/5 million and was sourced from India, and was not designed to withstand South African weather conditions.

A transformer specialist has been hired to help fine tune the device against what is called “nuisance tripping.”

“What we do know is that there is an internal problem in the substation. Last Wednesday, we took out a sample of the oil which will be sent to a lab for testing.”

The oil analysis will indicate if the problem lies with the transformer or if there are further issues within the substation.

Jali could not confirm how long the testing would take as the process would have to go through KDM’s supply chain department.

The director said they have been experiencing problems with the transformer tripping since as far back as 2014.

He said half of the oil had now been drained out the substation as a temporary measure.

“Since we drained some of the oil, we have not experienced a problem but we cannot promise anything yet. We will wait for the oil test results before we replace or fix what is broken.”

Hubner confirmed there had not been problems with the substation and the electricity outage that took place this Monday was caused by a damaged cable on a building site at one of the estates.

“A contractor damaged one of the cables during construction, which has since been fixed.”

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