On Tuesday, September 20 the MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services (EISD) Councillor Michael Sun was joined by the Roodepoort councillors for Wards 70, 71, 84, and 85 for a site visit to the Roodepoort Substation.
The visit was in relation to the challenges that City Power is facing with increased load-shedding, and vandalism while load-shedding is active on the grid.
After the 22:30 load-shedding on Saturday, September 17 the Davidsonville and Roodepoort West residents found themselves without electricity and the matter was raised with City Power.
On the following day at around 13:00 Ward 84 councillor Johannes Goosen and Ward 71 councillor Rene Benjamin whose wards were affected, were informed by the power utility of continuous cable theft that resulted in the prolonged outages.
According to City Power, despite security guards being placed at the Roodepoort Substation around the clock, cable theft continued at the substation in the last couple of weeks.
During load-shedding on Sunday night September 18, 11kV cables of the last transformer, transformer No 1 were stolen while security guards were on site.
Also read: https://www.citizen.co.za/roodepoort-record/2021/09/20/city-power-burdened-with-vandalism/
This left Roodepoort Substation without any power to supply the customers. City Power indicated that a team would investigate and repairs would be done at daybreak.
According to a City Power media release, all the security guards on site refused to provide any form of identification and when pictures were taken of them, they turned their backs towards the camera.
Roodepoort CBD, Matholesville, Wilfordon and Davidsonville areas remained off until repairs were done later with no ETR available.
See video here: https://www.facebook.com/michael.sun.165470/videos/902956390587803
Later in the morning it was confirmed that the Roodepoort Substation had fallen victim to vandalism.
The general manager Sbusiso Xulu and Councillor Benjamin went to the substation and met with the day shift team on site to look at how best to deal with the matter.
Due to extensive theft and damage the power load could not be moved to the back-up as it too had been stolen.
According to Councillor Benjamin, during her meeting with Xulu on site a decision was made to dig up a cable on site that had not been affected by the theft and use it to replace the stolen cables as well as provide an update to the residents.
The cable that was stolen is the Eskom feeder that supplied the Roodepoort Substation. As a result the transformer was damaged and generators could not be used because of the severity of the damage.
After City Power and its contractor employed some local residents to dig up the cables and assist with the removal in order to do the connection, the power was restored in the early hours of Monday, September 19.
