Johannesburg City Power said it has run through about 80% of its maintenance budget due to higher stages of load shedding by Eskom.
The resulting surges on its transmission network and rampant theft of critical equipment have forced it to make more replacements to critical infrastructure.
In response to enquiries, City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said while it historically budgeted for stock material, over the past year, in which Eskom imposed more than 200 days of load shedding, the utility replaced in excess of 390 mini substations, at a cost of R200 million.
Many of its mini substations (MSS), pole-mounted transformers, often blow up during load shedding due to different reasons including overloading and inrush current.
"For that reason, 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. City Power cannot keep up with the high demand to repair and replace damaged infrastructure. In recent weeks, there has been a demand for mini substations (MSS) due to the higher stages of load shedding. The electronic infrastructure was never meant to be switched on and off at short regular intervals.," Mangena said.
Rampant theft of equipment has also eaten into budget as City Power has thus far into the financial year recorded about 1 300 incidents of cable theft and vandalism, with arrests approaching 200.
In the 2021/2022 there were 2 175 recorded incidents of cable theft and vandalism.
Mangena said in addition, the increase in theft and vandalism is a significant problem across the city and further impacts replacement demands with criminals working around the loadshedding schedule to avoid electrocution or detection.
"It is worth noting that there are two types of vandalism – one that borders on sabotage,whereby criminals deliberately break into MSS and cut off cables, break fuses, remove doors and take nothing. On the other hand, we have vandalism where criminals break in, steal the breakers, fuses, cables, doors and copper bits inside and sell them off as scrap metals,' he said.
Mangena said City Power will be introducing a programme that seeks to create a sustainable partnership with local communities, businesses and other interested local community parties to protect its electricity network infrastructure.
Though unquantified, Eskom, the national power producer confirmed a significant increase in the damage to vital infrastructure including breakers and cables as a result of the constant load shedding disruptions in the grid, which has added a further burden on its maintenance.
Group Executive for Distribution, Monde Bala said on Monday although there had not been a noticeable spike in damage to transformers, there had been "significant increase in other equipment, including breakers and cables." he said.
This is as there are frequent reports of transformer damage in various communities, particularly as the power surges back after the outages.
Eskom conceded as well that there were an increased number of incidents of fraud and corruption by contractors and Eskom employees, particularly in Mpumalanga relating to the theft of coal and damage to infrastructure.
Mangena said City Power will continue to collaborate with external stakeholders especially law enforcement agencies and other critical stakeholders to mitigate essential infrastructure crimes.
"The entity is committed to safeguarding and protecting the electricity network infrastructure against various crime risks which include cable theft, and vandalism,' he said.
BUSINESS REPORT