Randpark Ridge, Boskruin and surrounds experienced 35 electricity outages this year
Residents count 300+ hours of unplanned electricity outages since January.
City Power has confirmed that recent power outages in Randpark Ridge, Boskruin, Sundowner and surrounds may become an issue of the past with the impending arrival of a new cable.
This comes after residents manually counted and tabulated via spreadsheet, every single unplanned electricity outage from January 12 to August 4.
They found electricity had been out a total of 305.8 hours in just under seven months. This is excluding load-shedding.
Ward 134 councillor Devon Steenkamp and Ward 126 councillor David Brand explained that, especially when power was restored during load-shedding recently, there were regular surges that led to more outages.
Brand said, “The load has been heavy with new developments and winter, with everyone having their heaters and geysers on. One of the cables couldn’t carry the load and it struggled whenever power came back after load-shedding.”
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said, “The ageing network had suffered the cable’s weakest link during the frequent load-shedding switching, cable failure rate was high.
“We would like to confirm that the network is reasonably stable after a few more cables were returned to normal configurations. We have one more circuit to work on, we are only waiting for the delivery of a 2.5km cable, the process to acquire such has been initiated. City Power is only waiting for a delivery, once received the work will commence.”
Now that there is no load-shedding, the supply is stable.
Steenkamp said a well-attended public meeting between City Power and residents saw these challenges and solutions discussed.
“City Power has advised that the situation for the areas is currently stable and they have now have availability of various back-feeding options to switch to should a fault occur and residents can expect only to experience a plus/minus four-hour outage from logging a call for back-feeding to take place so that it is not a whole day lost or many days of no power supply. However, if it is during load-shedding, it can prolong the hours of the outage.”
He said there are pros and cons of having an aluminium cable, like the 2.5km one that City Power wishes to instal. “The cons [are] lesser quality than copper cables, therefore, with load-shedding, it can have more of a affect in shortening the cable lifetime span and can blow more easily. The pros of switching to aluminium is that it can deter and decrease the amount of cable theft that is plaguing the city.”
Mangena concluded, “Residents are encouraged to report essential infrastructure-related matters to City Power’s Security Control on 011 490 7900/7911/7553, WhatsApp 083 579 4497 or [contact] their local law enforcement.”
35 unplanned electricity outages
With 35 unplanned outages during this period, January and April were the worst affected, each seeing the lights off for 66 hours, though July was close behind with 64.5.
Randpark Ridge resident Samantha van Nispen said, “Randpark Ridge Axt 14 and the surrounds have experienced a significant number of power outages this year, over and above the scheduled load-shedding.
“We have put together some data on the number of outages experienced in the area and can confirm that we have had around 300 hours of unscheduled power outages since the beginning of the year… This is negatively impacting the residents in the area and many of them are considering leaving the area because of the power issues.”
She added that, at the public meeting with City Power and the ward councillors, residents were informed that the area’s energy problems were being solved and they would not experience more extended outages.
Another resident, Warwick Stark, said it is too soon to be optimistic about the power situation, as load-shedding is not in effect and the cable has not yet been installed.
However, since then, they have had at least 16 hours of outages.
Residents hope the cable can be installed soon.
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