Despite R113m upgrades to Roosevelt Park substation, infrastructure cannot cope with load-shedding
The substation is in its seventh decade of service and is being detrimentally damaged by extended and frequent Eskom load-shedding.
In November 2019, the City Power (CP) Roosevelt Park substation was re-opened after a three-year, R133m upgrade. This substation, like many others across the city, is over 65 years old.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said, “It is important to note that the substation was only refurbished and not replaced. Therefore, we are still experiencing some failures and damage to the older elements, which contribute to outages outside of load-shedding. As a result, the implementation of higher stages of load-shedding, such as Stage 6 are causing more shocks and challenges for City Power, its systems, infrastructure, and by extension, the customers.”
The infrastructure, which was never meant to be switched on and off at short regular intervals, is buckling. “For that reason, many of our mini-substations, pole-mounted transformers, and transformers often catch fire or fail post-load-shedding for different reasons, including overloading and inrush current.”
The upgrades included two new 88kv lines feeding from the Delta substation, providing greater redundancy and stability for the network it is hoped for the next 20 years.
Furthermore, four 45MVA transformers, a state-of-the-art control plant, three new feeder boards, and a standby board were also installed.
The control plant enhances the safety standards for City Power technicians when they need to work on the equipment. The new feeder boards also enable new customers to be added to the substation without putting pressure on the electricity network.
Mangena said the entity loses R3.6m daily due to load-shedding, and the current higher stages of load-shedding are not helping.
“The issue of cable theft remains one of the biggest problems hampering our efforts to provide uninterrupted power supply services and resulting in significant revenue loss, especially around Hursthill and surrounding areas.”
City Power calls on local communities and businesses to participate in its community partnership programmes on electricity network infrastructure security to protect critical infrastructure and minimise power outages.
“Customers have an important role to play; we continue to urge customers to use electricity sparingly and to keep appliances, such as geysers, heaters, stoves, pool pumps, solar, and inverters unplugged as the grid is restored after each load-shedding session to reduce the power burden on reconnection.”
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