City Power running out of stock material due to load-shedding and vandalism
Communities need to help the City fight vandals.
City Power is unable to keep up with running mini-substations due to the higher stages of load-shedding.
Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they have been losing an average of two mini-substations per day due to theft and vandalism across their service delivery centres, with the hardest hit being Roodepoort.
“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.
“By January 18, City Power needed at least 14 mini-substation boxes to deal with several outages in different areas,” he said.
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, Wilropark, Weltevredenpark, Horizon at Georgina and Eagle streets, Florida at Clement street, Lufhereng
• Reuven: Robertsham, Lindenberg, Southdale and Turffontein
• Randburg: Boskruin
• Midrand: Halfwayhouse
Over the last year, in which Eskom imposed at least 205 days of load-shedding, City Power replaced more than 390 mini-substations, at R200m.
“This is the reason we have run out of stock of mini-substations. More mini-substations have been ordered and we are expecting deliveries this coming week, due to the long lead time nature of the commodity and the 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 have 14 mini-substations which need 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. The areas impacted by vandalised mini-substations in Roodepoort include Lufhereng, Roodepoort CBD, JG Strydom, Witpoortjie, Wilgeheuwel, and Weltervreden.
“Unfortunately, the above areas, and those in other SDCs, cannot be restored until we receive the stock of mini-substations. We appeal for calm and 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 report any suspicious activity around the electrical installations,” explained Mangena.
