WITH vandalism of municipal infrastructure and copper theft rife in Nelson Mandela Bay, the municipality has decided to now use aluminium instead of copper cables.
The Electricity and Energy directorate has already embarked on this project by recently replacing stolen copper cables with aluminium ones in Bethelsdorp.
The metro’s MMC for Electricity and Energy, Lance Grootboom, said that the reason they are opting for aluminium cables is that there is no market for aluminium, as opposed to copper that has a market value 10 times higher.
“This is an effort to deter infrastructure vandalism, prevent theft and to continue providing cost-effective services to our residents.
“Although the copper cable is a much better conductor of electricity than aluminium cables, copper cables are expensive and have a higher scrap value on the black market, while aluminium is still a fairly good conductor of electricity, is less expensive and has less scrap value,” he said.
When asked if the use of aluminium cables won’t influence the quality of electricity supply, Grootboom said that although copper cables may produce less technical losses than aluminium cables, the high capital costs of purchasing the cable and the high risk of theft makes the copper less attractive.
“Aluminium cables make economic sense, as the cables are less expensive and have fairly good characteristics for conducting electricity with a lower risk factor to theft.
“Aluminium may have average efficiencies compared to copper, which may result in higher technical losses, however, this can be mitigated by the design of the electrical circuits, ensuring that the correct size of the cable is used for the appropriate load and ensuring that the lengths of the electrical circuits are not too long.
“These are the principles that our team use to ensure that the use of aluminium cables remains economical for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.”
According to Grootboom, the project doesn’t entail going around the metro, removing every single copper cable and replacing it with aluminium cables but rather attending to incidents of vandalism and theft and responding to that incident by using aluminium cables.
“Copper is still in the system but we are slowly bringing about the change as we replace it with every reported incident of theft or vandalism. The main goal is to ensure that our residents have an uninterrupted supply of electricity,” he said.
He added that while recently doing oversight inspections at various substations with officials from his directorate to assess the extent of vandalism and illegal connections, they started to implement strategies to mitigate losses.
“I could see to it myself that our teams install overhead aluminium cables on street lights where copper cables were previously stolen from below the ground,” Grootboom said.
“Access to electricity is a basic right but it is important that residents are aware that electricity theft is a criminal offence. We want to help residents connect legally in order to restore their dignity and improve their quality of life.
“The Electricity and Energy directorate is committed to providing safe electricity distribution for all residents and businesses,” he said.
