Work to curb Randpark power outages underway

Ward 126 councillor David Brand has provided the Randburg Sun with a report issued by the City Power Randburg Depot to clarify the recent spate of outages in the area and the solutions it has in place to curb them.

According to the report, Mamodise Nkogatse of the City Power Randburg Depot said, “Several power outages were experienced in the past months in the area during the cause of the year. As a result of these outages, the community was unhappy with the service delivery from City Power.”

Randpark is a residential and business area and customers are affected negatively due to long outages in the area.

According to Nkogatse, the area is fed or back-fed with electricity from the Beyers Naudé, Northriding, Hawken and Knoppiesdoring/Soetdoring substations.

Nkogatse explained that during an outage City Power sometimes battles with pre-existing issues at these sites. For example, on 15 September, the Northriding distributor tripped and a cable fault occurred.

Supply could not be back-fed due to stolen copper cables from the Ouhout and Dale Lace distributors from Beyers Naudé substation, and the Hawken substation was overloaded during the cold winter conditions.

Nkogatse said, “To minimise these events from reoccurring there are a few actions to be carried out. All stolen and faulty cables will be replaced by aluminium cables which are of less value and criminals don’t steal it.

“A project is currently underway to reroute City cables, which exist under private properties, to council land.”

Nkogatse suggested that when City Power has finished the rerouting of cables from Beyers Naudé substation to the Randpark Ridge area, they will be able to move the load from Hawken switching station back to Beyers Naudé substation.

“Cable theft hotspot areas have also been identified and given to risk control to do spotting,” Nkogatse said.

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