Johannesburg power utility City Power is unable to keep up with the high demand for minisubstations owing to the higher stages of loadshedding, and is losing an average of two minisubstations a day owing to theft and vandalism across its service delivery centres, with the hardest hit being Roodepoort.

"The impact of loadshedding on our infrastructure is high, with minisubstations and transformers blowing up or being stolen. Since the recent higher stages of loadshedding, City Power has been losing minisubstations faster than we can replenish them," it says.

By 18 January, City Power was in need of at least 14 minisubstation boxes to deal with several outages in different areas. The 14 minisubstations – eight in Roodepoort, four in the Reuven service delivery centre, one in Randburg and one in Midrand – were vandalised.

Over the past year, in which State-owned power utility Eskom has imposed at least 205 days of loadshedding, City Power replaced more than 390 minisubstations at a cost of R200-million. This is the reason it has currently run out of stock of minisubstations.

"More minisubstations have been ordered and we are expecting deliveries starting from this coming week owing to the long lead-time nature of the commodity and festive season closure of most factories.

"Additionally, the impact of high demand on minisubstations 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 points out.

Owing to continued theft and vandalism of minisubstations in the middle of loadshedding and stock shortages, City Power currently has 14 minisubstations that need to be replaced across all eight service delivery centres.

On average, one minisubstation supplies 100 households depending on the size, which will explain the number of calls we may get every time a single minisubstation is vandalised or blows up.

The areas impacted by vandalised minisubstations in Roodepoort include Lufhereng, Roodepoort central business district, JG Strydom, Witpoortjie, Wilgeheuwel and Weltervreden.

"These areas, and those in other service deliver centres, cannot be restored until we receive the stock of minisubstations. We appeal for calm and patience from our customers as we work hard to address this shortage.

"We urge the residents to be vigilant and assist us by protecting local electricity infrastructure and reporting any suspicious activity around the electricity installations," the utility says.