Tshwane promises grid stabilisation after weeks of rolling blackouts

After weeks of rolling blackouts across Tshwane, mayor Nasiphi Moya has promised “fewer large‑scale failures” and a stabilisation plan to restore confidence in the city’s fragile grid.

On Tuesday Moya, along with deputy mayor Eugene Modise, and other officials, visited the Kentron Power Station in Centurion, where she outlined the plan of action to turn the power crisis around in the city.

Ageing infrastructure under strain

MMC for utility services Frans Boshielo said the prolonged electricity outages over December and January, particularly in Koedoespoort, East Lynne, Jan Niemand Park, parts of Centurion and surrounding neighbourhoods were the result of several pressures converging on an electricity network that was operating with little margin for error.

“Large parts of Tshwane’s electricity grid are old by any engineering standard,” he said. “More than half of the city’s high-voltage transformers are over 40 years old and some have been in service for more than 60 years.”

Boshielo said the city’s electricity network had experienced sustained funding gaps, with approved budgets consistently falling short of what was required to maintain, renew and protect the grid from at least the 2018 financial year onwards.

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“In real terms, this is a deficit of R364 million against a requirement of R548 million at a 66% shortfall,” he said.

“Fully refurbishing and replacing the ageing transformer and substation network infrastructure across the city will require an investment of about R3.5 billion, while the full 10-year demand for capital investment into the electricity network is R6 billion.”

Short-term stabilisation priorities

Moya said the power problem cannot be solved in a single year, adding the main focus over the next three months will be on immediate stabilisation and reducing the likelihood that faults escalate into major, prolonged outages, and restoring a basic level of control across the system so that failures can be contained and managed more effectively.

“Over the next three to 12 months, the city is prioritising the restoration of redundancy at high-impact substations such as Koedoespoort, Njala, Kwagga and Watloo,” she said.

“This includes repairing and returning existing transformers to service where possible, replacing end-of-life units where necessary and reinstating backup transformers so that faults or planned maintenance do not automatically result in blackouts.”

Moya said the plan focuses on completing major upgrade projects that are already well advanced and that will materially reduce strain on the network, such as the commissioning of Wapadrand substation, the restoration of Kentron substation, capacity upgrades at Monavoni, and supply-strengthening work at Pyramid and Rosslyn.

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