Doomsday can be averted if we vote for those who know how to fix electricity supply

You think things in Joburg are bad? They are. And they’re going to get worse, especially our electricity supply.

Although some residents still express surprised rage when power is off for a few unplanned hours, multiple-day outages are already common across the city, affecting the wealthiest to the poorest.

Four years ago, there was a headline about the 10 most expensive streets in Gauteng. All were in my Ward 90. In the past few weeks, residents of Sandhurst, Hyde Park and Dunkeld have been battered by power outages way beyond the scheduled 10 to 12 hours.

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Comparable to anything happening in poorer areas. This has been coming for a long time. The process is reminiscent of frogs boiled in a slow-heating pot.

We’ve said repeatedly that City Power’s infrastructure is not designed to be switched on and off at the frequency demanded by load shedding schedules. Those words have meaning. Substations blow up, cables and fuses burn, switches trip, and so on. This costs money. So, too, does cable theft.

Never mind corruption rackets. City Power loses R452 million a month. It spends R36 million servicing an R9.11 billion overdraft. Assets R3.9 billion versus R10.7 billion liabilities. Revenue collection in some townships is 15%.

City Power is a mini version of Eskom, constantly needing bailouts. It doesn’t have the money to fix what’s broken. Much of the downward spiral involves the twin concepts of plant out of service and back-feeding.

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When a cable fault is detected and there isn’t time or money for permanent repair, a solution is to connect the affected area to the network via different routes (back-feeding). This places extra strain on the equipment on that alternative route, while leaving the disconnected faulty plant out of service.

This has been happening to the large Rosebank substation (SS) which serves Rosebank, Dunkeld, Hyde Park, Saxonwold, Parkwood, Parktown North and parts of Craighall, among others.

Rosebank SS is fed via high-voltage cable from Delta SS in Hurlingham Manor. There has been much back-feeding in the suburbs. This includes attempts to lighten the load off Parkhurst SS. Now, Rosebank SS is carrying too much.

This causes excessive tripping, especially during cold weather and when there are multiple load shedding sessions.

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This is the background to a seemingly cryptic message from City Power on Monday night: “Hursthill SDC [service delivery centre] is working hard to bring back plants that are out of service in order to deal with these frequent outages”.

Bringing back plant from out of service costs money, which is short at City Power and in the City of Joburg.

As more customers use off-grid solutions, City Power’s revenue will continue to drop. And the entity will find it more difficult to look after poorer customers. Deterioration seems inevitable. Asina mali.

Doomsday can be averted if we vote into power those who know how to fix electricity supply, and are doing so where they govern.

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To leave this to the ANC mayoral puppet show playing out in Joburg is to invite grid collapse. Who wants to live in a heart of darkness?