Ongoing overload trips, burnt cables, and other issues with power being restored after four-hour load-shedding windows, and are a clear indication that four-hour outages are not feasible for the Roosevelt Park substation.
This is according to two councillors, Nicolene Jonker (Ward 88) and Nicole van Dyk (Ward 99). Jonker started a petition in a bid to halt outages of longer than two hours at Roosevelt Park substation, while Van Dyk has thrown her support behind it and asked residents to sign.
With 2 500 signatures at the time of going to print, it is clear their concerns are shared by City Power (CP) customers. The Roosevelt Park Substation cannot take 4-hour load-shedding periods, it is unclear at this stage if it will have any effect on an issue that is largely out of the hands of CP.
Jonker said, “I created the petition due to the ongoing trips after four-hour load-shedding sessions which has become all too frequent and untenable for residents. It is unacceptable that residents have to endure 30-hour periods before their power is restored.”
“This puts so much strain on our local economy, not to mention people working from home who are terrified of losing their jobs.”
“We are asking CP to please look into why we trip after four-hour load-shedding windows and to please put a plan in place to avoid further overload trips.”
Spokesperson for the state entity Isaac Mangena said, “South Africa is facing an energy emergency.”
Challenges in restoring power come from a myriad of reasons he said, one of which is because ‘resources get dispatched to physically restore power’. Add to that the overload trips.
“Tripping at a substation happens when the interruption of electricity supply causes a fault, an overload of power, equipment failure or other factors causes the circuit breaker to trip in order to isolate the faulty lines from the rest of the healthy sections.”
“This happens in order to avoid serious damage to the power infrastructure. To put the substation back online from an overload-triggered trip, the team must first balance the load. That’s why even after power has been duly restored, some areas will remain off until the in-rush current subsides.”
“Most of this is happening along the network and not the substation. We have close to 600 plants that are out of service across the City of Johannesburg, most of these in Hursthill including Roosevelt Park Substation.”
“What that means is we are operating at an abnormal configuration of the network. Because of load-shedding pressures, we are not able to maintenance work on those plants that are out of service.”
“Furthermore, materials required for repairs are increasingly becoming difficult to source, as they are depleted faster than we can procure them. For example, we have so far this year used 27 000 cable joints – an amount we used over three years in the past.”
Load-shedding stage six looks to be more and more common as winter approaches. “Eskom needs to prevent the failure of the entire system when the demand for electricity outweighs their power to generate electricity.”
While both Jonker and Van Dyk agree that load-shedding is not a CP-created problem. It is causing havoc on their infrastructure.
“If a newly refurbished substation like Roosevelt Park trips after the restoration of power, we need a contingency plan. Be it changing the length of load-shedding sessions to shorter ones or making sure technicians are on-site and ready to assist with the trip,” said Jonker.
Van Dyk said, “Some substations which were notoriously bad with trips have been given some assistance. They still trip but not nearly as much. But they do still trip and will continue to do so as long as load-shedding holds and grows in frequency. No grid can take this. We hope this petition might force a discussion around how to help the Roosevelt substation from further damage and the devastating effect being felt by residents.”
Related Article:
Firefighters help JW identify problem water hydrants across the city
