City Power runs out of substation spares — and it’s running out of money
City Power has run out of minisubstations to restore power to several areas in Johannesburg, and it has already spent 80% of its budget for the financial year.
The power utility spent R200 million over the last year to replace more than 390 minisubstations.
City Power released a statement detailing its struggle to keep up with the demand for minisubstations that need to be replaced due to theft, vandalism, and load-shedding.
“We have been losing an average of two minisubstations per day due to theft and vandalism across our Service Delivery Centres, with the hardest hit being Roodepoort,” it said.
“The impact of load-shedding is high on our infrastructure, with minisubstations and transformers blowing up, or being stolen.”
“Since the recent higher stages of load-shedding, City Power has been losing minisubstations faster than we can replenish them,” City Power added.
The power utility said the primary reason for running out of minisubstations was the high intensity of rotational power cuts over the last year.
“Over the last year, in which Eskom imposed at least 205 days of load-shedding, City Power replaced in excess of 390 minisubstations, at a cost of R200 million,” it said.
“This is the reason we have currently ran (sic) out of stock of minisubstations.”
The power utility said it still needs to replace 14 minisubstation boxes that were vandalised in several areas in Johannesburg, including eight in Roodepoort.
Affected areas in Roodepoort include:
- Roodepoort CBD
- JG Strydom
- Witpoortjie
- Wilgeheuwel
- Weltervreden
“More minisubstations have been ordered and we are expecting deliveries from this coming week, due to the long lead time nature of the commodity and festive closure of most factories,” City Power said.
“Unfortunately, the above areas, and those in other SDCs, cannot be restored until we receive the stock of minisubstaions.”
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