City Power elaborates on their uphill battle to keep the city’s lights on

The national and municipal custodians of the electricity infrastructure are dealing with a dire situation.

City Power may be responsible for the boots on the ground in suburban streets, but the source of all current is upstream nationally. An unprotected strike by Eskom employees is contributing to the immense strain on the electricity grid, exacerbated by criminal opportunists abusing the extended down time. In a media briefing on Tuesday morning, June 28, Acting Executive of Generation at Eskom, Rhulani Mathebula made a plea to striking Eskom employees to put the interests of the nation first.

Due to the strike, Mathebula said over 3 000 available megawatts have not been returned to the grid because authorised and skilled personnel were not available. Listing multiple power stations across the country that were operating on skeleton staff, he warned that should the strike continue, there is a risk that more generating capacity could be lost, resulting in an escalation in the stages of the rolling blackouts.

This domino effect compounds the problems that were already being experienced by City Power. “In-rush currents, multiple cable faults, vandalism and overloading due to the cold weather are the reasons for the trippings in most areas, especially after load-shedding restorations,” explained City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena. “Cables that have been repaired after cable theft are also susceptible to faults during load-shedding because they have been weakened over time,” he added.

This situation is creating a logistical nightmare for City Power, their staff and most importantly, costumers sitting in their homes and offices across South Africa’s economic hub. “Apart from the lost revenue during load-shedding, we are also forced to pull technicians and operators from leave, and many are already fatigued. We are also forced to divide our resources between attending to outage calls and responding to the two-hourly load-shedding switch-on and offs,” said Mangena.

Eskom’s Mathebula urged the striking employees to return to work so that efforts to maintain the electricity grid’s integrity could be secured. Mangena stressed that the longer the strike continues, the more fragile the infrastructure becomes, maintenance becomes more infrequent and the potential for theft and vandalism increases. Speaking on Monday, June 27, Mangena said, “We are, in fact, preparing for the worst as City Power if no solution is found soon”.

As an immediate precaution, City Power will be increasing the resources in their service delivery centres, adding operators in an attempt to increase response times with limited delays during restorations. Thanking the residents of Johannesburg for their patience, Mangena said, “We are aware of the inconvenience this is causing to the customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused, especially over the weekend. We will improve communication through the councillors to ensure customers are best prepared to plan their lives during load-shedding.”