Power outages and trips soon to end
The theft and vandalism at the Randburg substation have had a significant impact on residents in several surbubs
On July 18, City Power announced that Eskom has energised the transformer at the Randburg substation and they will start to take load.
This follows the theft of oil on the Eskom transformer which created an overload on City Power over and above experiencing cable theft on their second transformer. This momentarily affected electricity supply to the residents of Randburg.
Supply to the affected customers was restored as soon as City Power was able to replace the stolen cable. Eskom has been working around the clock to repair and refuel the transformer. This process involves refuelling of more than 10 000l of the stolen oil, circulating and purifying it so that City Power can take load.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena explained that there has been an increase in incidents of theft and vandalism resulting in the loss of revenue and increased replacement costs for both organisations.
“These criminal acts do not only affect the power utilities, but they inconvenience law-abiding, paying customers and community service points such as healthcare and education facilities, businesses and the economy at large.”
Members of the public are requested to partner with Eskom and City Power by reporting electricity-related criminal acts such as cable and transformer oil theft, illegal connections and vandalism of electricity infrastructure.
“We also asked them to refrain from recording and sharing material that is not factual about outages as this may lead to confusion and panic among the affected customers.”
Customers are urged to use both entities’ communication platforms to obtain reliable and correct information.
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