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City Power buckles under load shedding and rampant cable theft
Double power crisis: As load shedding hits, cable thieves are stripping City Power-operated sub-stations of crucial infrastructure.
A stolen cable has resulted in an unplanned outage in the Randburg area. Photo for illustration: iStock
Johannesburg power supplier, City Power said Eskom’s load shedding is putting a strain on its own network and resources, thus affecting its response time to local outages.
The local power utility warned that Joburg residents are in for a rough ride because the current rolling blackouts due to load shedding are going to exacerbate issues because it is still recovering from backlogs caused by the recent inclement weather and the persistent rains.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said its technical teams have been working tirelessly to resolve ongoing power supply issues in Eldorado Park, and they are now reaching a breaking point amid the rampant theft, vandalism, and equipment failure.
“From this morning (Thursday) we have been dealing with many outages, over 2000, in different areas that are as a result of load shedding,” explains Mangena.
“Most of the localised faults seen during load shedding are due to vandalism and theft which happens during the downtime when the network is off during load shedding.
“Criminals take advantage and tamper with the infrastructure leading to post-load shedding outages,” he added.
The already constrained local electricity supplier has promised to beef up teams for quicker response and restoration after load shedding.
It further stated that procurement of the material is going well, with more cables, joints, and fuses being delivered.
“With the recent cable thefts and vandalism, we have increased security patrols in the hotspots to address cable theft and vandalism,” explained Mangena.
City Power was at pains to point out that it has zero control over load shedding.
“We are badly affected as an entity as we are not making money during load shedding and in fact lose millions due to the impact this has on the infrastructure, equipment that fails, overtime as we have to get more teams on shift, recall others from leave to attend to the two-hourly switching on and off.”
City Power is unable to carry out planned maintenance during the state-imposed power cuts due to safety reasons and because of over-stretched resources.
“We are forced to divide ourselves between attending to regular outage faults and attending to load shedding.
“When there is load shedding we are not able to attend to most outage calls, and we are not able to do unplanned maintenance,” said Mangena.
Compiled by Narissa Subramoney
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