Technicians cannot fix faults during load-shedding, which costs City Power R3.6m daily
Ward councillors also discuss why the electricity grid was not designed to be turned on and off again.
Two Randburg ward councillors have asked residents to turn switches off during load-shedding and for people to be patient with faults, as load-shedding has led to a decrease in the response time of technicians.
“If they do not do load-shedding the system will fail altogether,” Ward 101 councillor Ralf Bittkau said. “If that happens we sit for two weeks without power until they can get the system up and running.”
Furthermore, he explained our electricity grid is not designed to be switched on and off. “When they are switched back on you get a surge current, and that is why I keep telling people to switch stuff off as much as possible so the surge current is as low as possible and it balances the system quicker.”
If there is an overload, however, the system trips. “The other thing that happens is you get a little knick in the underground cable, in the insulation. The surge current is so strong that it blows the cable. Now you have a 7km cable and you have to find where it has blown.”
The test teams who find these faults are always busy and stretched thin, with sometimes eight hours passing before they arrive at their next job.
Bittkau said a surge can also cause a transformer to blow because the plates inside them are held by an electromagnetic field. “The power goes down, the electromagnetic field is gone. Now the surge comes through and those plates actually move and buckle. When two plates touch, you blow the transformer.”
Bittkau and Ward 134 councillor Devon Steenkamp explained that technicians cannot work on faults during load-shedding as they cannot test the power is working, and there is a safety risk for when the power is restored.
“If one of the officials didn’t switch off the switches by mistake and Eskom decides to switch the power back on, they can be electrocuted if they are working on cables,” Steenkamp said. This was confirmed by City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena, who said in April that Stage 6 load-shedding is ‘causing more shocks and challenges for City Power’.
“We lose about R3.6m daily due to load-shedding, and the current higher stages… do not help,” he said.
The ward councillors urged residents to log faults when power goes off outside of load-shedding. They will escalate the matter then if residents send a message either directly to them or on their WhatsApp groups with their name, cellphone number, address, reference number, date and time of the problem, and what the issue is.
Details: Ward 101 councillor Ralf Bittkau Ralf@polka.co.za; 084 572 4002; Ward 134 councillor Devon Steenkamp devon@ward134.co.za;
083 397 9914.
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