City Power embark on a three-week programme to audit problematic areas
City Power will engage the law to deal with infrastructures under electricity transmission lines servitude.
Recently City Power encountered several major outages across the City, including the eastern corridor, which were found to have been caused by encroaching structures such as trees under the transmission lines.
The senior technician at City Power, Mokete Mokgethi, said the utility embarked on a three-week programme to audit the problematic areas and draw up a plan with timelines to clear the servitude of any risks.
“The City’s by-laws forbid anyone from occupying or building a structure under City Power transmission lines. Problematic areas include Cleveland, Mayfair, Sebenza, Winchester, Senderwood, Sandton, Sunninghill, Bedfordview and Alexandra, among others,” said Mokgethi.
The utility has 40 high-voltage transmission lines interconnecting the main substations, which includes Delta, Prospect, Orlando, Sebenza and Fordsburg, and secondary main substations at a voltage ranging from 88kV to 275kV.
“These lines form a backbone ring of high voltage transmission lines that ensure customers receive electricity. Unlike others, and that is the reason why we need to constantly maintain and clear the servitude, if we lose one of these lines, the amount of customers affected is huge with each estimated to feed about 20 substations.
“Ninety-five per cent of substations are supplied through transmission lines. Five per cent, mostly in Joburg CBD, are supplied via underground cables,” he said.
Maintenance includes tree-cutting, which they are currently embarking on.
“We have a R60-million contract with Joburg City Parks to assist us in ensuring we monitor and clear any vegetation around the lines, particularly in areas where constant unplanned power outages are resulting from trees falling on our overhead lines.”
Besides costing City Power millions of rands the incidents knock out power at several bulk substations.
“What follows is that residents are left without power for several hours if not days while repairs are being carried out. Besides the stormy weather being the main cause of trees falling on our lines, other causes are growing tree branches, which end up leaning over our towers and lines, soil erosion and environmental degradation which plays a role in destabilising and uprooting trees as well,” said Mokgethi.
“The tree management service has helped to prevent many such incidents in the past particularly during stormy weather conditions. Our legal team and other law enforcement agencies will attend to the properties that have illegally built structures under the electricity servitude.
“Often our technicians are denied access to the private properties to maintain and repair the transmission lines or even cut the trees, which creates problems for us. We urge the community to desist from doing so as this is not only dangerous but illegal and punishment include imprisonment,” said Mokgethi.
