City of Johannesburg increase power capacity in north-eastern suburbs
JOHANNESBURG – The substation is one of the biggest City Power substations earmarked to stabilise supply of power in the north eastern areas of Johannesburg and parts of the South.
The City of Johannesburg is rolling back years of ‘underspending’ on critical service delivery infrastructure because ‘failure has to be fixed’ for the sake of the residents and local economy.
This according to the City’s mayor Herman Mashaba while delivering his third annual State of the City Address at the city council in Braamfontein.
Mashaba said his administration would have increased spending on repairs and maintenance from two per cent to more than five per cent by the end of this financial year.
The City’s spending on power supply, water, roads, transport and housing was now sitting at its highest levels in the administration’s history, he claimed.
Mashaba, addressing his coalition governing party members after ANC councillors had staged a walkout, said the ageing electricity network required the refurbishing of sub-stations.
This, he said, included among others, the Sebenza substation in Halfway House in Midrand which had burst into flames as couple of months ago and plunged parts of Johannesburg north-east in darkness for a period.
The Sebenza substation was relaunched on 7 February and the mayor said they had invested more than R1.2 billion in the ‘biggest sub-station in the Southern Hemisphere.’
Among the areas that would benefit from Sebenza were Alexandra, Gresswold, Sandringham, Athol Oaklands, Rosebank, Melrose and Parkhurst, he said.
“This mega substation will ‘energise’ 30 per cent of the population of the city of Johannesburg. The job of keeping it functioning smoothly will require a delicate balance between repairs and maintenance, alongside investment into refurbishing our aged infrastructure.”
He added that old sub-stations, built decades ago, have not been able to keep up with the increasing demands of the growing communities they now served.
According to the mayor, the completion of these sub-station refurbishments is expected to be completed in July this year.
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