City Power has indicated that they are running out of stock material as the power utility is unable to keep up with the high demand for mini substations due to the higher stages of load-shedding.
According to City Power, they have been losing an average of two mini substations per day due to theft and vandalism across their Service Delivery Centres (SDC), with the hardest hit being Roodepoort.
Also read: One person killed in Roodepoort after vandalising mini substation
“The impact of load-shedding is high on our infrastructure, with mini substations and transformers blowing up, or being stolen. Since the recent higher stages of load-shedding, City Power has been losing mini substations faster than we can replenish them,” said City Power Spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.
On Wednesday, January 18, City Power was in need of at least 14 mini substation boxes to deal with several outages in different areas.
Also read: Four substations fitted with alarms to curb vandalism
Mangena said that all the mini substations were vandalised, eight of them in Roodepoort, four in Reuven SDC, one in Randburg, and one in Midrand.
• Roodepoort – North Witpoortjie, Wilro Park, Weltevreden Park, Horizon at Georgina and Eagle streets, Florida at Clement Street, Lufhereng
• Reuven – Robertsham, Lindenberg, Southdale, Turfontein,
• Randburg – Boskruin
• Midrand – Halfwayhouse
Over the last year, in which Eskom imposed at least 205 days of load-shedding, City Power replaced in excess of 390 mini substations, at a cost of R200 million.
According to City Power, this is the reason they have currently ran out of stock of mini substations.
Mangena confirmed that more mini substations have been ordered and they are expecting deliveries from this coming week, due to the long lead time nature of the commodity and festive closure of most factories.
“It must also be mentioned that the impact of high demand on mini substations has left a huge dent in our budget and as it is we have already spent 80% of our budget for the whole financial year. Due to continued theft and vandalism of mini substations in the middle of load-shedding and stock shortages, we are currently having 14 mini substations which needs to be replaced across all eight SDCs. On average, one mini substation supplies 100 households depending on the size, which will explain the number of calls we may get every time a single mini substation is vandalised or blows up,” explained Mangena.
Areas impacted by vandalised mini substations in Roodepoort include Lufhereng, Roodepoort CBD, JG Strydom, Witpoortjie, Wilgeheuwel, and Weltevreden.
According to Mangena, these areas, and those in other SDCs, cannot be restored until City Power receive the stock of mini substations.
“We appeal for calm anreport any suspicious activity around the electricity installations,” he concluded.d patience from our customers as we work hard to address this shortage. We urge the residents to be vigilant and assist by protecting their electricity infrastructure and
