Frustration is running higher by the minute for residents of Discovery who have been without electricity since the morning of Friday, 14 May. City Power advised that the main cause of the outage was damage caused to one of their medium voltage (MV) cables, which led to several other faults.
A third-party contractor allegedly damaged the cable while digging along City Power’s MV cable route. Ward 84 councillor, Gert Niemand, explained that the local City Power depot and their technicians tried their utmost to restore electricity on the Friday, but due to the amount of work that needed to be done, they could only restore part of the area by Saturday evening – even utilising the help of off-duty technicians to make sure that at least the local Frail Care Centre had power.
By late Sunday afternoon, a few more households had been restored, thanks to a generator that the depot managed to arrange. Three days into the outage, Gert said that the local depot advised they would be placing more generators to assist residents, and by Sunday night, another generator had been placed.
By Monday morning, approximately 400 households in the area were still in darkness according to the councillor. Aware of two generators in the Discovery area, Gert said that he was promised that the depot would attempt to attain more generators. However, a morning statement from City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said that three generators had already been placed and work was under way to install a fourth, so the power should have been restored by that evening, which it was not. The mystery third generator was later reported to have been placed at the Roodepoort Civic Centre in Florida – an area not affected by this outage. City Power stated that the generator had been placed there in order to run a data centre and back-up supply.
With two generators in Discovery and one in Florida, Gert was then reportedly notified on Monday evening that generators were no longer an option, and another plan needed to be made. The entity explained that a contractor had been appointed to run a temporary MV cable between the affected mini-substations to speed up restoration, but they were still attempting to arrange for the materials needed to conduct the repairs.
This morning, 18 May, City Power confirmed that the needed materials had been received and technicians were on site working on the repairs. A temporary cable has just been installed on Gildea Street, giving a few more households electricity. Work is currently under way to connect a MV cable between the Robinson Avenue Substation and the two mini-subs on Gildea Street, following which, the generator currently at that location will be moved to Struben Street. Moving the generator should result in power being restored to the remaining households, but there is unfortunately no estimated time as to when this will happen. The Record will post an update when more information becomes available.
Gert said that he believes the local depot has tried its best, but their efforts have been hampered by ‘unrealistic bureaucracy and red tape within City Power’. He added that a ‘don’t care attitude’ from City Power management is also a possible reason that the depot has been unable to solve the problem as yet. He pleaded with the City’s Mayor, Geoff Makhubo, and relevant MMC to deploy more generators while City Power searches for a long-term solution, saying that the residents are all rate-paying customers of the municipality and expect the services they pay for.
