Residents across Ward 107 (covering Sandown, Parklands and parts of Table View) were plunged into darkness for up to three days over the weekend due to a power outage.
The areas affected are supplied by Eskom Direct, which means the City of Cape Town has no influence on their electricity supply.
Eskom, in turn, pointed the finger at a faulty substation in the area.
“The electricity tripped at the substation and we are still conducting the investigation for the cause of the fault,” says Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson.
More questions than answers
As residents search for answers and relief, questions linger about the effectiveness of current strategies and the commitment of Eskom to address the root causes of this ongoing crisis.
“While occasional outages may be expected, the frequency and prolonged nature of recent disruptions point to deeper systemic issues that demand urgent attention.
“Aging infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, and insufficient investment in renewable energy sources have all contributed to the vulnerability of our power grid,” says resident Gavin Hill.
Implications
Other residents took their concerns to social media and raised their voices in collective frustration, pointing to the broader implications these power interruptions have on their lives. From the spoilage of perishable goods to concerns about their safety and well-being, the impact is far-reaching and demands urgent attention from both local authorities and power providers.
“The power was on for about 10 minutes over the weekend and then it was off again. Blows my mind that this keeps happening. Surely Parklands should get a period of exemption from the load shedding until they can sort all of this out?” a resident says via Facebook.
“Why (doesn’t it) happen to other surbubs like Camps Bay, Sea Point, (the) Waterfront? Why it always happening to us? They might find a permanent solution for this, we pay here,” another post reads.
More outages
TygerBurger approached the local councillor, Jonathan Mills who said his role as City councillor has been limited to trying to find information to share with the residents.
It was via him that residents learnt Eskom technicians were on site to fix the issue on Friday 23 February.
“(The) remaining fault is the primary issue and is on the medium-voltage level. The operater is attending to it and supply will be restored soon,” he said in a Facebook post. “Update 12h00 – the issue was a result of 3 breakers which tripped in succession. Two have now been fixed restoring power to residential areas. Business area fault is being attended to next. Eskom (is) aware of the issue and are investigating. We will share any information we receive as it becomes available,” Mills posted.
Other areas
Earlier this month the Rivergate and Montague Gardens areas were affected due to cable theft, Mills said in a post.
And on 12 February various roads in Parklands were affected by another power outage
“Following the last week’s power failure affecting a large area of Parklands, we are now experiencing further outages across the area. These are multiple, separate failures: one yesterday which has been off for around 30 hours and two more today including reports earlier of a loud bang which we assume was a mini-substation and a new failure at the end of load shedding,” Mills said on that day
“Unfortunately we have had zero communication from Eskom or reports of Eskom teams in the area. It is our assumption that Stage 6 coupled with the deployment of Eskom resources from multiple provinces to the Karoo has affected response times even more than usual.”
As of Tuesday 27 February the power had been restored in the areas.
Mills says the issues seem to be infrastructure related and get severe as load shedding reaches higher stages.
“The recent stage 6 and stage 4 blackouts put more strain on the local infrastructure than it could bear,” he says.
