Residents in Alexandra, Johannesburg, continue to experience recurring electricity outages as illegal connections, network overloading and low levels of electricity purchases place increasing pressure on the township’s electricity network.
In a statement on Friday, City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the Alexandra service delivery centre recorded about 10 medium-voltage outages over the past several weeks, making it one of the city’s hardest-hit areas.
Mangena said many of the outages were caused by severe overloading rather than technical faults, blaming illegal electricity connections, unauthorised backyard dwellings and increased winter electricity demand for repeated failures of transformers, mini substations and medium-voltage equipment.
City Power said only 1,054 of Alexandra’s 41,512 registered electricity customers were actively purchasing electricity. A further 1,832 customers were buying below the required average, while 38,626 were not purchasing electricity at all.
Mangena said the situation meant customers who paid for electricity were effectively subsidising the replacement of infrastructure damaged by overloading and illegal consumption.
The utility said it had replaced several damaged transformers, mini substations and other equipment in River Park, Kings Flats, Twentieth Avenue, Kassie, Vezinyawo, Vasco Da Gama and Lombardy East as part of ongoing restoration efforts.
Mangena said residents in non-vending communities could regularise their electricity supply through the utility’s normalisation programme by making a one-off payment of R500. Of that amount, R200 covers service charges, while the remaining R300 is “credited back” to customers’ prepaid electricity meters as electricity units.
He said customers with illegal connections would ordinarily face charges exceeding R14,000 but the reduced fee was intended to help qualifying households transition into the formal electricity system.
City Power said the programme had already been successfully implemented in River Park, 9th Avenue, 11th Avenue, 15th and 16th Avenues in Alexandra.
Mangena urged residents to reduce pressure on the electricity network by avoiding the simultaneous use of high-consumption appliances during peak periods, refraining from connecting backyard structures through unauthorised extensions and purchasing electricity legally.
In the coming weeks, City Power will intensify operations to disconnect illegal electricity connections in identified hotspot areas across Johannesburg
Source: Times Live
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