Frequent Power Failures in Gansbaai-Stanford Area

Frequent power failures in Gansbaai-Stanford area addressed by Eskom Overstrand Municipality’s Executive Mayor Dudley Coetzee, Cllr Riana de Coning and relevant officials of the Municipality, had a meeting with Eskom staff on Wednesday, 12 August 2020 to discuss concerns regarding the frequency of Eskom power failures, affecting electricity supply.

The Gansbaai-Stanford area is often without power for a number of days due to the poles and pylons being blown over - and in addition, residents lost all ability to communicate by landline or cell phone.

The Municipality had previously addressed issues with Eskom in a letter dated 23 December 2019 after which a maintenance schedule was received in response from Eskom.

A follow-up letter, dated 15 July, to voice the community’s concerns were directed to Eskom so as to find a workable and mutually acceptable solution to address the problems. This then resulted in the meeting which took place last Wednesday.

During this meeting:

- Eskom has undertaken to survey all their electricity poles from Botriver to Gansbaai as well as the line through Kleinmond.

- Eskom has furthermore undertaken to replace, as part of a scheduled maintenance programme, replace all suspected poles and they will advise the Municipality as well as the public in advance of the power interruptions while poles are replaced.

- The Municipality has requested that the poles preferably be replaced with steel poles.

- In addition to the above, all the existing poles will be secured with anchor cables where these are currently not in place.

Eskom estimates that the survey and fitting of anchor cables to the existing poles should be completed by March 2021. The pole replacements may take longer depending on the number of poles that need to be replaced and the available funding.

The possibility of providing a ring-feed supply was also discussed but the cost of such a system, which would be for the account of the Overstrand, is simply not affordable.

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