Africa-Press – South-Africa. The City of Johannesburg will spend more than R6 million on repairs to two damaged substations following ongoing load shedding and cable theft.
Parts of the city have been experiencing extended outages following Stage 6 load shedding, with its old infrastructure blowing up due to the frequency of turning the electricity supply on and off.
Residents of Riverlea, Langlaagte, Industria, Bosmont, and surrounding areas were left without electricity for several days after a fire broke out at the Industria substation on Sunday.
According to City Power, the fire started on one of the feeder boards during load shedding.
During a site inspection at the substation on Tuesday, Environment and Infrastructure Services MMC Michael Sun said the substation “exploded” following the “direct impact” from load shedding.
“The system within Johannesburg was never designed and built to withstand the continuous switching on and off during load shedding.
“The load shedding stages only aggravate and damage the infrastructure.”
Sun added City Power technicians have been working day and night to restore power to affected areas.
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He said they hoped to restore power by 18:00 on Tuesday.
“I am pushing my colleagues and technicians in City Power to ensure that we bring back power to our residents before 18:00 today [Tuesday].”
Restoring the substation will set the City back R3 million.
About 13km from Industria, technicians worked around to clock to restore power to several Roodepoort suburbs, including Matholeville, Goudrand, and surrounds.
This after overhead lines and cables were stolen.
City Power’s general manager for Roodepoort, Sibusiso Xulu, told News24 the substation was plagued by cable theft.
Xulu said thieves was stealing all accessories and cables.
“It is quite a challenge at this point in time… At times, it happens under security, and they are fearing for their lives because these people [thieves] are heavily armed.”
He added it could cost around R3.5 million to repair the damaged substation.
An entry point to an underground shaft was seen next to the substation’s fence.
Xulu said the fence had been cut several times, allegedly by zama zamas.
“They [zama zamas] can go underground, come out hungry without getting anything, and decide to take anything they see in front of them.”
Sun added the City hoped to procure additional energy capacity from independent power producers (IPPs) soon.
“In the month of September, at latest early October, we will be releasing the first phase of requests for proposals to onboard IPPs so we can procure additional capacity to feed into the grid.”
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