South Africa - Pretoria - 4 June 2024 - Finance MMC Jacqui Uys delivers the 2024/2025 Budget speech at Tshwane House. Picture: Jacques Naude / Independent Newspapers
Plans have been put in place to protect the City of Tshwane’s substations from unexpected fires such the recent outbreak that occurred at the Mooikloof substation and the disastrous blaze that destroyed the Wapadrand substation in 2021.
Part of the plans include the refurbishment and maintenance of its electricity infrastructure with a view to reducing unscheduled outages and driving economic growth in the municipality.
Finance MMC Jacqui Uys said the City had taken a stance not to normalise substation fires by committing resources to prevent such situations.
Tabling the 2024/25 municipal budget this week, Uys said the City had set aside R20 million for battery surge protection at substations.
This comes after deputy mayor Nasiphi Moya last month gave the assurance that work was on track to complete in October the rebuilding of the Wapadrand substation, which went up in flames in 2021.
The Mooikloof 132/11kV substation also recently experienced an explosion, resulting in a fire on Transformer B and the 11kV panels.
The incident, according to the City, was caused by a fault originating from one of the 11kV power lines outside the substation.
Uys said the City was also allocating R177m towards electricity network maintenance materials.
A total of R1m was put aside for the Gomsand and Claudius substations, for repairs to cabling in the substation yards and to stabilise the electricity supply in those areas.
Uys said: “A further R54m is allocated to strengthening the 11kV cable network, with focus areas like panels in secondary substations, network upgrades and strengthening overhead networks.”
The City will focus on installing new feeder cables between the Eerste Fabrieke substation and the Nellmapius substation to relieve additional capacity to support the Tshwane Automotive Special Economic Zone developments in Waltloo.
A budget of R179m will be utilised for upgrading of different substations to ensure reliable electricity.
The upgrading at the Kentron substation will receive R38m, while R60m will go towards the Soshanguve powerline project.
The Wapadrand substation will have a R30m budget, the Monavoni substation will receive R31m and the Mooikloof substation R15m.
On the other hand, the City will inject R25m into the Pyramid substation, R13m towards the Rosslyn substation and R5m towards the Kwagga infeed station.
In instances where power outages do occur, the City has allocated funds to speed up repair times.
For example, an amount of R5m was allocated to trunked radio communication, with another R5m to fault reporting and dispatches, including R25m to replacing test equipment.
Pretoria News