Electricity outages in Hillcrest/ Kloof and surrounding areas

This summarizes the root causes of power outages in the Kloof, Hillcrest, Gillitts and surrounding areas. These areas and other surrounding areas are currently being supplied from Hillcrest Major (4050), Kloof major (901) and Waterfall (11085). According to the faults book, 2 types of faults were recorded;

1. Cable faults
   There have been a lot of excavations recently in central western area by contractors to widen the roads/lay water and drainage pipes and 90% of faults recorded are due to cable damage by excavators. It must be noted that it takes a long period of time to locate a cable fault.
2. Animals/Birds
   Small animals (monkeys, snakes, birds etc) also cause power outages. These animals climb on certain pieces of equipment, such as transformers and fuses, causing the equipment to shut down. By shutting down, the equipment protects the rest of the system.

There is work that is currently going on to upgrade the network to improve the reliability of system and includes replacement of switchgear and bare overhead line to reduce the average fault frequency.