Preliminary reports from City Power have suggested that the recent weather is the cause for the electricity outages being currently experienced across Region B.
To address the matter and fulfil their commitment to ensuring network stability, City Power teams were investigating the cause of the outages. City Power spokesperson Isaac MangenaMangena said, “So far the protection trip which happened recently could have been caused by the weather or trees. At least that’s what we got preliminarily. Now that the weather is a bit stable, we will dispatch the high voltage team to run the 88Kv lines to verify and rectify.”
The two substations that are often the cause of outages are Delta substation and Roosevelt Park substation. According to Mangena, the two face different challenges as they are quite different in their nature. “The difference between Delta substation and Roosevelt substation is that Delta is an intake from Eskom… it supplies almost 20 substations with electricity, including Roosevelt substation. Roosevelt is a distribution substation.”
Mangena denied claims that the recent outages were linked to load shedding as residents have been sceptical about the real reasons for the power cuts. According to him, load shedding is a load-limiting mechanism to contain and manage power available from Eskom generation and is done as a last resort to protect the whole system from a total shutdown. Unplanned power outages which have been taking place in Region B are power disruptions that are not scheduled and are due to an abnormal condition in the network or a fault.
“There is no reason to hide the load shedding schedule… Load shedding is not done by City Power but by Eskom.” City Power could not guarantee that these outages would not occur as they were electrical failures outside of their control but have committed to doing everything they could to ensure network stability.
Mangena added that other causes of such issues were due to vandalism and theft of City Power infrastructure. He said residents could assist City Power by switching off appliances to avoid surges or inrush current whenever power had been restored. City Power also urged residents to report any vandalism or suspicious activities around their infrastructure.
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