Chantelle Benjamin

Johannesburg Metro Editor

CITY Power would overshoot its target for power outages this year, having already exceeded its self-imposed limit for blackouts in the first three quarters, the Johannesburg City Council has been told.

In a report by the Contract Management Unit, a body assigned to monitor utilities on behalf of the city, concerns were raised about the number of power cuts in the medium-voltage range used by industry.

Already there have been 1060 outages this year, against a target of 1500 and, as the report points out, the city still has to get through the winter months.

Households and other low-voltage users have seen 107062 power cuts so far this year, meaning the utility is likely to exceed the year’s target of 133600.

The report said that for City Power to make its target it could not have more than 26538 power cuts in the final quarter, but trends suggest that the number will be closer to 35000.

The report highlights the City Power’s inability to meet the needs of SA’s largest city. The utility earlier this year announced it would embark on a five-year plan to upgrade its ailing network.

In the past financial year R200m was spent on infrastructure maintenance, upgrades and refurbishments. The utility will now spend R2bn, an average of R400m a year, to upgrade or replace transformers, switchboards and cables that had exceeded their life cycles.

The high percentage of unaccounted-for electricity, at 13%, was a concern. This resulted from billing problems, the illegal use and infrastructure problems.

The unit said it was unable to verify claims by City Power that 90% of the lights reported by the public for repair had been fixed, as it had not been given information on the number of calls received and the utility’s response.

The utility was also failing to meet the targets it set to repair faults. While City Power was "constantly trying to improve on their time lines", it was not making its target for repairs under one-and-a-half hours. On average the utility took seven-and-a-half hours to repair a fault, the report said.

City Power was asked to address its call centre’s capacity to improve customer services.

"As a result of the high volume of outages, the system cannot cope with incoming call volumes. If the system is incapable of managing incoming calls during an outage, what is City Power doing to address this?" the report said.

Income for the quarter was R10,4m less than the R36,7m budgeted for because of an under recovery of cut-off and reconnection fees. Fortunately, this was offset by the income from service connections, which exceeded the year-to-date budget R48,2m.

City Power was not willing to comment on the report.