Joburg water outages | Is there any backup plan to stop the problem from reoccurring?

A backup plan is in the pipeline to prevent a water crisis like that faced by Johannesburg this week from reoccurring. 

This week several Johannesburg areas were plagued by water outages when lightning struck City Power's Eikenhof substation affecting the transformer supplying power to the Rand Water pump station.

That meant Rand Water couldn't pump water as there was no alternative supply available. City Power group executive for operations and maintenance Charles Tlouane said the backup plan was to build a high voltage yard at the Eikenhof pump station. 

He was addressing the media along with City of Johannesburg manager Floyd Brink and mayor Kabelo Gwamanda.

He said they had exempted the station from load-shedding and it had three power transformers on site with one of them dedicated to the South Hills areas. 

“But there are two transformers on site that are dedicated to Rand Water at Eikenhof substation. Those two transformers are not being load-shed. 

“We also need to mention that Eikenhof is getting power from Orlando through the Fordsburg substation, our main intake from Eskom, and it transmits from Fordsburg to Orlando, Orlando to Eikenhof feeding Rand Water. That is the only power supply we have and when we lose the Fordsburg-Orlando line, it means it will impact Rand Water,” Tlouane said. 

“Sometimes nature takes its course, adverse weather conditions and so forth, and it causes those kinds of situations or any type of equipment that may fail at that point and time.”  

He said there was a plan in place and they have been engaging with Rand Water for some time about the need to build a high voltage yard to feed Rand Water.

“Because it will be bulk intake from Mondeor to their side as an alternative, when we lose Orlando then immediately within seconds Mondeor will kick in, or when you lose Mondeor immediately within seconds Orlando will kick in and there won't be any disruptions.”

He said Rand Water would have to remove one of its big bulk pipes where City Power planned to build the high voltage yard so “that we should be able to start construction and then give it to them as a redundancy plan”.

According to Tlouane, Rand Water has been working behind the scenes to make it a reality and City Power has everything in place and is ready to start with construction. 

“We are just only waiting for them. Once we have agreed then construction work can start. That is the backup plan we have,” he said. 

He added it is a work in progress, “a car that is moving” but unfortunately when they are in the process of reconstruction and refurbishment, certain things do happen.

“But when these breakdowns happen, it is all about how speedily we resolve them and I think we are trying our utmost level to make sure that we respond as quickly as possible,” he said. 

City manager Floyd Brink said as part of their budget adjustment and the new budget in July, they have started a programme that will allow them to set aside funding specifically for solar systems and backup systems at the city's pump stations.

This will be done in terms of an emergency plan. 

“There is close collaboration and working together between City Power and Joburg Water. Within the next few months we should start to see those particular backup plans as we are moving forward. This incident that occurred is something that we just couldn't foresee at that time,” said Brink. 

Joburg Water's acting GM of operations, Logan Munsamy, added they have an extensive water demand management strategy which is currently focusing on the physical losses.

“Our network has currently relatively high physical losses through leaks. We have a dedicated team and we have restructured our department to do active leak detections, and fix leaks.

“We have also started to deploy resources on the ground in terms of isolating bursts and leaks as far as practically possible. We don't always achieve the intended target but we are going in the right direction,” he said.

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