The Randburg Service Delivery Centre (SDC) apologises to Kelland households for the long-standing and frequent power outages.
On June 8, City Power held a meeting with Kelland residents, during which customers expressed their dissatisfaction and urged that action be made immediately to address these issues.
In response to residents’ concerns, City Power committed to conducting a network audit to understand the root cause of the regular outages, and cable fault repairs to take place within the month of June. The plan of action and timelines were shared with the community.
Asked why there are so many issues, City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said that Beyers substation supplies power to Kelland; however, due to a cable fault resulting in two plants being out of service, some residents were back-fed from Randburg substation to restore power supply.
“Following that, the infrastructure in the area includes multiple temporal fixes installed when the material for a permanent fix was unavailable. To avoid leaving customers in the dark, contractors installed temporal solutions to restore the power supply. All these alternative solutions have resulted in an unstable power supply in the area.”
He added that most outages leave customers without electricity for an extended period. “These incidents are causing frustration to customers, and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
The following plan of action was shared with the community representative Paul Haupt:
- June 13: technicians investigated and audited the cable connection on all the temporal solutions and plants out of service.
- June 14: technicians and operators analysed the state of the network
- June 15: metering technician conducted audit in meters in the area.
- June 16: quantify the material required to replace all the faulty cables on the network and connect the whole area back to the Beyers substation.
- June 19: collect the material and start with repairs. The project will be completed on June 30.
Another issue residents raised in the meeting was the communication system to City Power. Residents claimed that they had issues calling and logging calls.
Mangena said that they plan on improving the automated system used to update customers on the status of incidents logged.
“The upgrade will ensure that the automated messages are editable to indicate why calls are closed when the power cut is affected by an area outage. When dealing with area outages, customers are updated on the progress made to restore the power supply via social media and regular updates are shared with the counsellor.”
Paul Haupt said that City Power has responded to their appeal adequately.
“They have listed the faults and explained what they intend to do to fix the problems – and by when the work should be completed. Whether or not we expect the problems all to be resolved remains to be seen. City Power have made the commitment, now we can only wait and see.”
Related Article:
Kelland residents sit down with City Power to discuss issues
