ESKOM is ready and prepared for this year’s winter season.
The national power utility has devised a Winter Plan 2017 to deal with electricity issues and put measures in place to prevent power outages.
“Because of the winter’s low temperatures and cold conditions, winter preparedness is very important,” said Eskom.
The objectives of the winter plan are to anticipate, prevent or avert possible equipment failures or incidents. Another objective is to manage the network’s provincial and national delivery failures.
Hence they have also devised a specific plan for the Ekurhuleni zone.
The metro’s winter plan will focus mainly on township areas, which are prone to becoming “disaster” areas because of social unrest and major system constraints. Township networks are often overloaded due to the cold weather and illegal power connections.
Eskom’s strategies to alleviate this will include upgrading township power networks and converting to prepaid meters. They will also embark on engaging with the community and educating them.
The plan will specifically address townships such as Daveyton, Etwatwa, Katlehong, Tsakane, Vosloorus, Duduza, Dunnotar and Zonk’zizwe.
Moreover, actions to be undertaken include:
• Outages for non-paying and non-buying customers will not be restored immediately, but instead will be audited within 72 hours
• Daily patrolling of known cable hot spots to prevent cable theft and cable damage
• Installation of 20 000 new prepaid split meters with anti-vandal proof boxes to reduce illegal connections
• Upgrade transformers and bundle conductor within known constrained electrification networks
• Removal of illegal connections and regular operations in collaboration with the SAPS and metro police
Customer service will also be made a priority through increased capacity of the call centre. Staff members and managers will be on standby for emergency situations and localised and national nerve centres will be activated in the instances of major outages. SMSs will also be issued to customers to ensure awareness and advance preparation in major outage situations.
“We will, together with various stakeholders, continue to intensify efforts to alert and sensitise the public to the safety risks associated with the irresponsible and wrong use of electricity.
“It is during the winter period that we experience an increase in safety-related incidents and fatalities as a result of illegal connections, meter bypasses and other forms of tampering with electricity infrastructure,” the power utility said.
Connecting illegally through unauthorised and substandard means such as home-use extension cables or wires which run across the street, through streams, over corrugated iron roofs and over washing lines is a death trap. Eskom is obliged by law to remove these illegal connections – not only because these weaken the network, but also for your safety and that of your loved ones.
Report illegal connections on 08600 37566 or via SMS to the crime line 32211. Alternatively, report to your local police station or the Eskom contact centre on 08600 37566.
