August 12, 2005
By Ndaba Dlamini
JOBURG survived the winter this year with fewer power outages - evidence of the City's concerted efforts to upgrade its ageing electricity infrastructure over the next five years.
Brian Hlongwa, the mayoral committee member for municipal services entities, says the decrease in the number of power outages is mainly because Joburg's electricity network has been strengthened, particularly the 11kv cables.
"We spent R147,2-million on infrastructure during the 2003/04 financial year and upgrades were done in Dainfern, Illovo, Fordsburg, Kliber Park and Ennerdale, to name but a few areas."
The City has spent close to R3,6-billion since 2000 on improving the electricity network. About R400-million was made available during 2004/05, some of which was used to buy power transformers, to upgrade the overloaded mini sub-stations, and to convert 6,6kv networks to 11 kilo volts.
Earlier this year City Power, Johannesburg's utility electricity provider, launched Operation Vuselela, a project to upgrade its ageing network. City Power plans to go all out to invest in replacing obsolete electricity networks over the next five years.
Along with Eskom, City Power supplies electricity to the City of Johannesburg. It also buys electricity from the coal-powered Kelvin Power Station.
Cable theft, illegal connections and vandalism have increased the challenges of power outages.
"It will take about five years at a cost of R400-million to R600-million per annum to eradicate the backlog," Hlongwa says.
"We realised that firefighting is not a competency of City Power and have now compiled a five-year plan to upgrade the infrastructure with the necessary funding allocated accordingly during the 2004/05 financial year."
The five-year master plan includes information on where and what has to be done to the electricity infrastructure to accommodate growth.
It entails appointing consulting engineers to prepare short-, medium- and long-term transmission and distribution plans for the Midrand area. For the remainder of the metropolitan area, consulting engineers will help with loading and network problems in Simert Road, Randburg and in Roodepoort.
Eskom will do pre-engineering studies at Fordsburg, Prospect, Delta, Kelvin and Orlando substations.
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