Power problems plague Boskruin
BOSKRUIN – Residents of Boskruin and the surrounding area have been plagued by a spate of power outages over the last year.
Residents of Boskruin and surrounding areas have been plagued by a spate of power outages over the past year.
As a result of this, hundreds of residents are unhappy.
MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Nico de Jager addressed local ward councillors on 18 October at the Hawken Avenue substation to discuss the causes of the outages and the solutions that the City had in place.
He said, “The main issue is that there is a cable fault in the line that feeds from the Randburg main substation to the Hawken switching station. As the power goes off and gets put back on again, the fault causes a trip that has to be manually restored. This is why the electricity issues in this area are so bad.”
In the past year, the fault has been responsible for 10 lengthy power outages in the area.
The first fault occurred when a company laying fibre optic cables damaged the City’s cables. Repairing this led to a further outage across Randburg, and more cables were found to be damaged.
With the recent load shedding, all work had to stop as it is unsafe to continue work during that time. One cable on the left side of Hawken Avenue has been fully replaced, now the cable on the right will be replaced too.
De Jager continued, “The reality is that this is a challenge. There are over 200 households that will be affected by the second cable. As these repairs continue, we are slowly bringing them back on.
“We are going to try and not load shed this area again as we know the infrastructure cannot handle it.”
Ward 101 councillor Dalu Cele said, “Our residents are not happy. In the midst of this issue is the recent load shedding which only makes the problem worse, and it takes a while for the area to have power restored. It can take up to 24 hours for restoration to take place.
“From the ward councillor’s side, we have asked for a full report into the situation and its causes, but most importantly what is going to be put into place to improve the situation.”
Areas in North Riding and Kelland were also affected by the fault, which has been supposedly caused by a faulty distributor switch.
“We want to ensure our residents that teams have been and will be working long and hard to ensure that these problems do not persist,” concluded Cele.
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