Power outages to be resolved

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The party says the metro’s Electricity Department has identified that 3.6km of the main feeder line and 1.5km of the ring line need to be replaced as the cable has lost its integrity.

Ward Clr Bruce Reid, says they worked tirelessly following up with officials to determine the cause of the power failures that frustrated residents recently.

“In particular, director of Operations and Maintenance, Hannes Roos, is praised for the ongoing feedback he has given on the repairs to cables, as well as officials in the Electricity Department for their tireless work in trying their best to keep the power on and restoring it as quickly as possible when the failures occurred,” says Reid.

Reid points out the importance of residents understanding that the cause of the irregular power failures was not due to old infrastructure or poor maintenance.

“The outages were as a result of a power surge of such magnitude near the Les Smit Power Station in Boksburg, that it destroyed the metro’s surge protection and damaged the integrity of the entire cable network south of Les Smit.

“The strength of the surge is a determining factor here and not the age of the cables,” he explains.

Intermittent faults occur when there is a power surge and these faults weaken the power line and become cable faults.

Reid says that the testing and repair process is time-consuming in that it can take up to three hours to pinpoint the fault on a main feeder line.

“A team then needs to be sent out to the location in order to dig up and replace the part of the cable that is broken, which can take up to six hours.

“It is only after having repaired an identified fault that the electricians can test the line again to make sure there are no more faults before turning the power back on,” says Reid.

Reid points out that cable theft is also one of the causes of power failures, but says the metro has employed the services of CPI Security to assist with this problem.

“CPI Security has been instrumental in the arrest of over 1 000 perpetrators since 2006. Of those arrested, there is a prosecution rate of over 80 per cent. Judges are now handing out stiffer penalties of between three and seven years,” he says.

Reid says the process has already started to replace the cables.

“The estimated completion date to replace the identified cables is the end of February. There could be cable faults experienced until these cables are replaced.”