Johannesburg power supplier, City Power says it is unable to maintain its high demand for electricity due to infrastructure vandalism.
City Power announced that it cannot keep up with the high demand for mini-substations owing to the higher stages of load shedding, and is losing an average of two mini-substations a day owing to theft and vandalism.
The power utility said this is happening across its service delivery centres, with the hardest hit being Roodepoort.
“The impact of load shedding on our infrastructure is high, with mini-substations and transformers blowing up or being stolen. Since the recent higher stages of load shedding, City Power has been losing mini-substations faster than we can replenish them,” it said in a statement.
As of January 18, City Power was in need of at least 14 mini-substation boxes to deal with several outages in different areas.
The 14 mini-substations – eight in Roodepoort, four in the Reuven service delivery centre, one in Randburg, and one in Midrand – were all vandalised.
The statement to the media detailed that over the past year, in which State-owned power utility Eskom has imposed at least 205 days of load shedding, City Power replaced more than 390 mini-substations to the tune of R200-million.
Additionally, the municipality agency said this is the reason it has currently run out of stock of mini-substations.
“More mini-substations have been ordered and we are expecting deliveries starting from this coming week owing to the long lead-time nature of the commodity and festive season closure of most factories,” continued the statement.
“Additionally, the impact of high demand on mini-substations has left a huge dent in our budget and, as it is, we have already spent 80% of our budget for the whole financial year.”
Owing to continued theft and vandalism of mini-substations in the middle of load-shedding and stock shortages, City Power currently has 14 mini-substations that need to be replaced across all eight service delivery centres.
BusinessTech Africa understands that on average, one mini-substation supplies 100 households depending on the size, which will explain the number of calls they may get every time a single mini-substation is vandalised or blows up.
The areas impacted by vandalised mini-substations in Roodepoort include Lufhereng, Roodepoort central business district, JG Strydom, Witpoortjie, Wilgeheuwel, and Weltervreden Park.
“These areas, and those in other service delivery centres, cannot be restored until we receive the stock of mini-substations. We appeal for calm and patience from our customers as we work hard to address this shortage,” urged the utility.
“We urge the residents to be vigilant and assist us by protecting local electricity infrastructure and reporting any suspicious activity around the electricity installations.”
