# Interest group forums > Electrical Contracting Industry Forum > Electrical Load Shedding Forum >  The economic consequences of load shedding

## Dave A

South African load shedding has just got to be hurting our economy.



> I'll comment on some of the economic impact we're experiencing later, but here are some views from a foreign investment point of view.
> 
> Eskom's call for the government not to advertise South Africa as an investment location with cheap electricity does not mean the country is closed for new business.
> 
> This is the view of Iraj Abedian, the chief executive of Pan African Advisory Services, who said yesterday: "What the call does is open up options for investors and give guidance. 
> 
> "It says all those who want to invest in South Africa should look at industries with less reliance on energy, among other things. When investors come here, they need to reprofile the industries they want to enter." 
> 
> Tony Twine, a senior economist at Econometrix, said Eskom's advice simply meant that low-cost power was no longer a positive attribute, as it had been in the past. 
> ...


I'll make a post on how load shedding is affecting our business later when I've got a bit more time.

In the meantime, how is it affecting your business?

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## Debbiedle

We are right now in the process of shifting what would have been an employee expansion budget to pay for additional UPS's!  Delaying expansion by about 6 months!  I have been able to work for exactly 4 business days this year after Telkom went down, Eskom went down, my ISP went down and I eventually went down with anger management problems!!!!!!!

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## IanF

We've only had 1 power failure so far, but if it comes and there are jobs running on the copiers then you have problems especially if you are doing a run of say 200 manuals. The printed manuals have to be counted and then restart. We also have to sometimes manually wash the ink rollers on the press as it is not good to leave them inked overnight.

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## Dave A

Eish, Debbie. And I thought *we* were having fun and games!

On our side we've had 8 hours of power shedding this week (so far) for our office. Future power shedding is now covered for the office - we've got the backup generator installed at a cost of R7500.00 give or take a few cents. So from here on in any outages will cost us around R25.00 per hour between fuel and maintenance costs of the generator (at current fuel prices).

From here it is the impact on our field staff that is going to be the headache. Arriving at a client's house when the electricity is off is somewhat of a problem for the electrical company. 

Durban has been broken into 6 blocks of 2 hours each for load shedding purposes. In theory this means there is a 1 in 6 chance of us arriving at a client's house to find no electricity. It's too early to say what the actual stat might end up being, but I've asked for the issue to be tracked.

As a cause of unnecessary wastage and expense, this one is going to add up.

On the upside, we got 4 enquiries to install backup generators today  :Smile:

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## Chatmaster

A guy was interviewed yesterday on 702, he lost a R10mil deal because of the load shedding,... I decided, I have nothing to complain about...

Dave you are highlighting a very important point. The load shedding will create a snowball effect on our businesses. I was at a client yesterday, he had 3 workshops going when the first power failure hit. There was in total over 100 delegates, all employees that took time of work to attend a workshop. They were effectively interrupted for 2 hours. The problem this created is the following. Here was over 100 employees, not at work, that effectively had a 4 hour interrupted workshop, which meant they lost half the day's training. The chances was good that they would have to return the next day to continue their 1 day workshop. That is if my client had the venue available to do so. The point I am making is that the snowball costs is very high. This was at one single venue! 

Employees are effectively spending 1 hour longer in traffic in Jhb. I missed an appointment today, simply because I was stuck in traffic for the entire duration of what the client had available to see me. Traffic lights was out and I was stuck. My one friend had the exact same problem, difference was he was stuck in a lift. Same happened to another friend being stuck behind a magnetic door in a shop for 2 hours, the toilet was outside btw. :Whistling: 

Shacking head in misery.

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## Yvonne

There are consequences that you would not ever take into account! 

Long story: Short version. 
Bank fraud - all linked accounts. Over R100,000 involved.
Try to stop all transactions; Bank require S.A.P. case number.
Police unable to give case number - no electricity, have to wait until power is restored. 

Lack of constant supply of adequate electricity is not a threat to the stability of our businesses - it is a fact!

What about the economic viability of future developments in the knowledge that there will be insufficient power available: First priority will be the need to provide your own power, if that is a feasible cost, then the feasibility of the actual development next?
Cost will surely rule out future developments?

Should a development such as the Gauteng Train continue, surely this will draw a substantial amount off the grid?

Plans for residential developments are not being passed as electricity cannot be supplied! 

I have concerns about "abuse" of power with regard to which areas are selected for power shedding, (Eskom offices are never without power during working hours?)
The potential for corruption in regard to obtaining "protection" from shedding exists.

Yvonne

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## Yvonne

Apologies, see this is well covered in another post, had not read all my unread posts, and should not have posted so quickly!
Yvonne

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## Dave A

> Apologies, see this is well covered in another post, had not read all my unread posts,


There was bound to be some cross-over, Yvonne. I don't see any problems with that.

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## murdock

to give you an idea...i go to site because of an electrical fault i get to site started tracing the fault power goes off so i leave site drive from westville to customer next to gateway...e/l has blown form lightning...get there no power replace the e/l unit and switch back on and hope it works...off to sarnia to work at a customer no power...so now i have to plan my day and visits around load shedding...cut back on staff because i dont need people sitting around on site waitng for power.

companies are suffering...i have a customer who wants to put in a generator...the cost to keep the plant running... 1.8 million excluding installation and waiting period 4 months...more than 50 staff sit every day for 4 hours and the machines loose production of 6 hours because of the time required to setup after the load shedding takes 1 hour the company is running 24/7...and you think you have problems.

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## Dave A

Add replacement of maliciously damaged property to the cost.



> Three trains were set alight in Pretoria by angry commuters, police said on Friday.
> 
> Captain Prince Mokhabela said the first train was burnt in Pretoria North at 6pm. 
> 
> "There was a power failure and commuters got angry as trains were not moving. People also burned trains at Walmerton and Winterveld," he said.
> 
> No one was injured and no arrests were made.
> 
> Police are investigating cases of malicious damage to property.
> full story from M&G here

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## Marq

Was looking for something completely unrelated and came across this page on the South african.info site for some reason.......

http://www.southafrica.info/doing_bu...gisa060206.htm

This report is dated february 2006 - two years ago - So what happened in the meantime to this 'Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (ASGISA)' and Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka's BS on infrastructure development. 

Besides the anthem being changed to 'sounds of silence' we have that old trusted ditty used at wedding speeches and the like ....'how the hell can we believe you'

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## bullfrog

I've had about 8 hours of power out cause of load shedding and more than 5 hours on another day. I believe the 5 hours on the one day might have been caused by a big fire, but there's no way to be sure.

The direct costs aren't quite as apparent in my business as I'm still quite small. I also choose to always work on my laptop which lasts the full duration of the outages in most cases but I still have to sit without internet which is a big issue as making sure that servers are running smoothly is 24/7 job. So once the power goes out all work at the office comes to a grinding stop. Most of the services I offer requires an internet connection so there's really nothing I can do without one.

In the web design department it hits a little harder. For me to get clients I need other businesses to do well enough to be able to afford to get web sites designed. With the power issues, businesses suffer which makes it harder to get clients. Not to mention the people who are generally in a bad mood, more so than usual, cause of all the power issues.

I'll definitely be investing in a ups for all the office peripherals and the adsl router.

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## murdock

air polution....10000 diesel genertors running at the same time pumping black smoke into the air...what is worse 1 power plant or a whole lot of small plants generating heat and polution...more fuel being used...noise polution??? all these issues are going to become a reality.

wake up in the morning no power your day starts 
no breakfast
no hairdryer
no hot water for the baby bottle
get in your car and drive to work no robots chaos so called 4 way stop yeah right this is africa
get to work no computer...telephone exchange...machinery...
lights...factory has been broken into because the electric fence was down...alarm battery went flat...staff sit around with nothing to do until power comes on loss of production do we put the staff on short time until the power comes on???do we re-arrange lunch and tea times???start work later and make people work later???and if there is load shedding put the staff on short time???
go to site and to find load shedding has just started send the customer a call out fee...and then another call out fee when you go back???what happens if all the places i plan to work during the day are load shedding do i send my staff home without pay???
the list just goes on and on...wait till the water problems starts.

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## duncan drennan

I wonder if we'll see an increase in the sales of gas appliances, such as stoves and geysers? There probably already has been quite an increase. It is nice to know that I can at least cook even if the power is out.

I wonder if there is merit in changing large (industrial) electrical water heating applications over to gas?

As always, with the economic loss on the one hand, there are a number of opportunities that arise for certain industries.

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## duncan drennan

I saw a headline in the newspaper (didn't read the article) that the *requirement for energy consumption reduction is 20%*. That is a huge amount to drop!

You could probably drop all household consumption by that amount by just installing solar geysers (another group of people who are going to benefit), but what about within industry? Solar water heaters for industry? Where are the places that companies could cut 20% of electricity usage?

Does anyone know whether the aluminium smelters operate at night? Any chance for load shifting?

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## Dave A

> Does anyone know whether the aluminium smelters operate at night?


An aluminium smelter runs 24/7. It's a continuous process of electrolysis that also produces the heat required to keep the contents molten. If the power goes down for even a very short period of time (I last had to deal with this a long time ago, but I think it is about 15 -30 minutes), the contents solidify, there is not enough electrical resistance to produce the heat to bring it back to a liquid, and the vat has to be scrapped.

Basically, if you power down, you pretty much have to scrap the smelter and start from scratch.

When I was with Eskom, you have no idea how seriously keeping power to the Richards Bay smelter was taken.

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## Chatmaster

I am completely confused. 

In an interview with Eskom on Morning Live this morning the guy from Eskom clearly said that we have a policy of not supplying electricity to other countries if we have a shortage. Now over radio I heard Helen Zille state that they *are* supplying Zimbabwe with electricity. 

Now we apperently broke the record as the country that has the most load shedding ever, if this is true, shouldn't Zimbabwe be at the top of the list? Unless we are not the only country that supplies them with electricity. That brings another question, can we not purchase electricity from other countries?

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## murdock

well i dont know who went and told durban electricity that i had not experienced load shedding at home yet..thanks anyway...for the first time today my power was cut from 11.30 till 14.00 today...swines.

looks like i am gona have to invest in a whole lot of chickens this week get them to cr*p as much as possible so that i can enjoy the benefits of bio fuel.
this problem is a reality.

i think we must be overtaking zimbabwe it the race to total destruction of all resources...interest rate hikes...bread price increases...crime...and now my accountanting firm has just informed me that their rates will be increased because of the lost time and additional costs to install UPS power for their offices.

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## Dave A

Oh yay! Durban has changed their load shedding schedule  :Frown: 

Just when I had the routine all worked out!

To think I was going to compliment them on how well they've been sticking to their advertised schedule.

Now here is where it gets f'ing interesting.

We had a load shed today - 2.00pm to 4.00pm - which is exactly according to the "old" schedule. And yet I've just looked at their load shedding page now and it's all changed. According to that we should have been on the 10.00-12.30 shift today.

So what is the effective date of this change?
And best of all - we've programmed our client bookings based on the "old" schedule.

I really need to find a "screwed" smiley  :Mad:

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## Graeme

I had to drive right across the Durban Berea today whilst load shedding was in progress.  What a pleasure!  Everyone was treating robot intersections as 4-way stops.  Traffic was proceeding slowly but oh so smoothly.  Even the busy, busy Goble Road/Umgeni Road crossroad was working beautifully as a 4-way stop!  Black taxi's and all!

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## Dave A

That makes me wonder if accident rates at intersections is going up or down at the moment...

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## Dave A

> Economists estimate the cost to the economy has run into hundreds of millions of rands, adding to the woes brought on by the steep falls in financial markets triggered by growing fears of a US recession.
> 
> "The potential impact is a lot greater than the international [market] turbulence if you find that South Africa has run into a wall in terms of how business can invest and how the economy can grow," said Nicholas Kennedy, head of emerging markets at 4CAST in London.
> 
> "With the backdrop of the rand weakening, the global growth slowing and the dependence South Africa has on portfolio financing, anything that can potentially dent economic growth is very negative for local equities and the current account financing," he said.
> 
> The country's current account deficit stood at 8,1% of gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2007 and is seen remaining wide as the country spends billions of dollars on imports to develope its infrastructure.
> from M&G here


Along with tales of people deciding this is the last straw...

Ouch!

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## murdock

i must just clear something up...i mentioned a company suffering...well i was little out....they actually have 191 people on staff not 70...they lost 44 hours production at a cost of R10000.00 an hour last week alone just on the machine standing...not including staff sitting around waiting for the power to come back on...and the one hour it takes to reset the machine ready for production...the cost of the generator alone not including installation R2.6 million...and thats not the worst part...they have recenlty invested R30 million on machines to service customers needs who are now wanting to move their bussiness elsewhere because of deadlines not being kept because of the load shedding...is durban electricity trying to close companies down??? smiths and frame textiles are still running without load shedding...

why dont they build a power plant just for alusaf this would solve all the loading problems...for years to come.

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## murdock

anyone got any contact details for the right person to speak toat eskom or durban metro...i need to find out if this company quallifies for subsidies for the generator...and the fact that they has spent thousands of rands on power factor correction to make their factory run efficently..with a power factor of .96 i would think they should be rewarded in some small way instead of be punished by loading shedding...there are lots of companies out there with power factors of under .7 which means their factories are running at a 30% loss...in america you get penalties if your power factor is below .95...it should be the same in this country.


what this all means in english is that if you use 100 amps of power and you have a .7 power factor you can only use 70 amps (or 70 % efficency) then you start overloading everything ...we need dudley stevens to explain this properly he is the specialist in this field.

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## Marq

The New Durban schedule is out now after Ethekwini electricity has given great thought to each area and its concerns.

So now we will have no juice every night from 20h00. There are only 50 guest houses in my area and at least another 50 in the area just north who are also in the same time zone. We have been out during the day up to now which with bit of planning one can get around.

We will be welcoming our guests, who include a large percentage of overseas people, at this - their usual arrival time - in the dark. We have to change our intercom system as they would have to phone us to let us know they have arrived - thats if they have our phone number (most use emails beforehand). My water supply operates on a pumped system so thats the shower and clean up out of the question after they have arrived all hot and sticky. They will be unable to have access to emails and internet to tell their families that they have arrived, they will not be able to watch TV, so will probably have to explore Durban outside of the area they have specifically chosen to come and stay and visit. Thats of course providing they can get out of the property if the battery still operates the gates after a few hours or get back in. We will be unable to direct them in the area to restaurants to eat as we usually do as these businesses will also be down every night at their busiest time of operations. I cannot direct them by telling them to go through three traffic lights and turn left as there are no traffic lights. They will have to dodge the terrible durban drivers who do not know what the correct driving skill is when approaching a traffic light out scenario and put their lives at risk. 

What a holiday/business trip they are in for. All the fun of a third world country run by corrupt officials not doing their functions operating on candle power.  

So here's another example of foresite and good planning by Mr Sutcliffe and his merry band of officious officials. At least 150 small business in one area - b&b's restaurants etc. taken out, at one of their busiest times of the day all in  one hit 4 times a week. Not only are the businesses taken out, but their clients who include a good percentage of overseas tourists and investors are inconvenienced and left in the dark. Well why should we be the only ones left powerless? 

Lets gear up for the A1, Celine Dion, James Blunt, and 2010 and show the rest of the world how free energy and zero point energy operates - South African Style.  

New adventure movie is also on its way - The lost city of lights or was that the lost lights of a once great city - a swashbuckling tale of adventure in the place they call darkest africa. Or how about - how I once nearly spent my fortune in a country, but then I actually went there.  :EEK!:

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## irneb

Well, just looking at the company I work for (based in Sandton) - we're doing everything on computers so ... I can calculate we're losing about R14000 per 2h30 loadshed on Salaries alone. That means about R225,000 per month if you average 4 loadsheds per week, which we've found.

This doesn't even include any loss due to deadlines missed or clients deciding this company is not good enough to use. We're working with overseas clients mostly so they don't understand "Load shedding" - they think it's something you do in the toilet.

Or other factors such as rent, equipment malfunctions (because of power spikes), late arrivals due to traffic being a nightmare, etc. etc. etc.

This now becomes viable to invest in a genny, even if you're looking at about R3.50 per kW/h for diesel instead of Eishkom's R0.30 to R0.50.

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## irneb

And here's another nice thing that's happened ... Eskom's cut the power to the mines, apparently for a few weeks. Is this going to cause some retrenchments? And then? What's next? Sasol? The refineries getting crude oil from the harbors?

Imagine what impact that will have on the already struggling economy.

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## Chatmaster

> And here's another nice thing that's happened ... Eskom's cut the power to the mines, apparently for a few weeks.


I guess this is a good time to have shares in the Gold and Platinum sectors :Smile:

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## murdock

> anyone got any contact details for the right person to speak toat eskom or durban metro...i need to find out if this company quallifies for subsidies for the generator...and the fact that they has spent thousands of rands on power factor correction to make their factory run efficently..with a power factor of .96 i would think they should be rewarded in some small way instead of be punished by loading shedding...there are lots of companies out there with power factors of under .7 which means their factories are running at a 30% loss...in america you get penalties if your power factor is below .95...it should be the same in this country.





we have managed to move this company away from the load shed grid :Thumbup:

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## Dave A

Well done Murdock  :Yes:

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## Dave A

We have massive losses in the mining sector.



> The "nightmare" of South Africa's major gold, platinum and diamond mines shutting down because of power failures became a reality on Friday.
> 
> "Tens of millions of rands a day are being lost. It's a nightmare," said T-sec chief economist Mike Schussler.
> 
> The JSE gold mining sub-sector closed almost 6% lower on Friday. The move contributed to the gold price rising. The London afternoon fixing was up $12, to $918,25 an ounce.
> 
> Chris Hart, an Investment Solution economist, said mining was a key industry for the country.
> 
> "From that point of view the [power] cuts seem ... almost a disaster."
> ...

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## duncan drennan

I found this quite chilling,




> Apparently Eskom faces a bill of more than R7 billion to get its coal stocks back to about 20 days. They are currently precariously poised at between 2 and 3 days supply. And the quality of the coal has been affected by excessive rain.
> 
> From energycrisis.co.za


Do you think the coal mines are still receiving energy? Are we balanced on the knife edge of moving from crisis through to disaster?

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## Dave A

The same article I quoted above reported coal mines as running at full speed to keep Eskom fed.

I actually read a number of articles today trying to get a sense of the problem.

You know that a motorcar engine has a red line? A point at which you start doing significant permanent damage? I get a sense that Eskom has been redlining the generators that *are* online and some have started popping.

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## murdock

give these people rubber mallet and they will break it.

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## irneb

> Apparently Eskom faces a bill of more than R7 billion to get its coal stocks back to about 20 days. They are currently precariously poised at between 2 and 3 days supply. And the quality of the coal has been affected by excessive rain.


Now, what happens if Eskom cuts the power to the coal mines as well  :EEK!: ? That's something like shooting themselves in the foot and the arm and the head, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised, they've already turned the power to their own admin offices off (at least once).

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## Dave A

> South Africa, which had forecast five-percent annual growth until the end of the decade, will struggle to hit half that figure owing to its electricity crisis, economists warned on Tuesday.
> 
> "It's a question of if we can get the growth to three percent which, given the crisis the country finds itself in presently, I don't think we will," said Mike Schussler, senior economist at Johannesburg-based brokerage T-Sec.
> 
> "We may have to settle for at least two percent, depending on the severity of the crisis."
> 
> Presenting his annual budget last February, South Africa's veteran Finance Minister Trevor Manuel painted a rosy picture of the nation's economic future, predicting growth would be at least five percent in the coming three years.
> 
> But while the government has yet to concede its plans have been blown off course, economists say the drastic shortage of power which has forced daily blackouts will inevitably lead to a smaller level of growth.
> extract from Business Report here


More than just current losses, there would seem to be a long term effect.

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## irneb

> More than just current losses, there would seem to be a long term effect.


Not to mention companies deciding to close shop now, because they can't make a profit during this crisis. Especially those in the industrial sector which have very long turn-around times for their equipment, for a 2 hour power cut they may loose up to a day (or even more). That may even trigger a negative growth, i.e. rising unemployment.

Also, foreign investment will take a long term knock. Because it will take some time to get the stigma of a "powerless" country out of their minds, even if we can get around this crisis in the near future (the damage has already been done).

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## siya2008

hi
This is an economy issue + politicians failure = economic decline

I will briefly explain the above formula. When eskom presented a new plant project (economy issue) to Thabo Mbeki he was happy and he forget to ask(politicians failure) eskom disadvantages of this project. Today community and business are suffering(economic decline)

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## IanF

Who will be accountable for this and what will happen to them. I see no leadership from either our President or the CEO of Eskom on this crisis. That is disappointing.

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## Dave A

> I see no leadership from either our President or the CEO of Eskom on this crisis.


I think they are too busy ducking shrapnel. What we have seen so far is a panic response - there is very little evidence of a carefully considered and planned response to this.

I don't know about how everyone else is going, but this week I've suffered no load shedding anywhere. Has load shedding in the cities been reduced? It would seem so.

Where has the extra power come from to keep the cities running? The mine shut down. Apparently the mines account for about 17.5% of the total load.

The mines were informed that they could not rely on getting the power they needed. They had no choice but to shut down. Effectively, they were load-shedded as surely as if someone threw the switch.

Who made the decision that the mines _might_ be load-shedded?

More importantly, *why* was that decision made?

Were the mines traded in an attempt to pacify the people?

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## duncan drennan

I think it might have run a little differently.

Eskom was having a larger and larger deficit (due to the unplanned outages, i.e. coal and maintenance issues). Apparently nearly 10000MW was out on 28 Jan. With this large a deficit you start to face two options, either shut down a large chunk of power (in this case the mines), or have the whole country go down. The grid could become unstable and poof - no more electricity, for anyone, for a while.

In that situation I would negotiate with my largest consumers (fewer to manage) and strike a deal, which seems to be the case with the mines. For the miners it is a case of either maintaining the mines at 50% energy, or possibly losing them alltogether (if there is no electricity). Lesser of two evils I suppose.

In the meantime Eskom has to work super hard to get the capacity back up to "normal."

Just a thought.

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## IanF

> I don't know about how everyone else is going, but this week I've suffered no load shedding anywhere. Has load shedding in the cities been reduced? It would seem so.


Dave
We had 2 hours on Monday. For irony we had just printed a proposal for a French company for a power station on the weekend and they came in to get an invoice. We had no power so I had to give them a PDF invoice as we invoice from a laptop, so I could do that. The guy then said we have another 5 years to go of power cuts. :Big Grin:

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## Dave A

> Just a thought.


Same with my post - frankly your scenario is more likely but mine was wicked  :Big Grin: 
Or maybe just hopeful that this government does actually get concerned about its citizens every now and then.

Anyway, with the mines coming back on stream, I expect we'll be back to major rolling blackouts again soon enough.

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## Dave A

> *Load shedding to hit food inflation*
> The negative impact of power outages on bakeries, milk producers and processors, and bottlers of perishable foods, which have been suffering severe losses from electricity blackouts, is adding to concerns of no imminent easing in food inflation, says economist from Standard Bank, Danelee van Dyk.
> 
> Sharp food inflation, together with energy issues, have been the key bugbears in keeping South Africa's CPIX inflation above the upper 6% upper band for nine months running. The latest data today shows CPIX at a whopping 8.6 percent year-on-year.
> 
> "The financial loss related to the current load shedding by a leading milk producer is already estimated at three million rand, but could run to as much as R600-million. Production losses as a result of power outages could reduce supply in these food groups, which may find its way into higher food prices," explains Van Dyk.
> full story from Business Report here


Load shedding is certainly a threat when it comes to food safety as it increases the prospects of breaking the cold chain.

Saturday night we had to throw away a chicken that was meant for dinner. Sue had bought it that morning. Once the packaging was removed, there was that sickly smell of meat gone bad. The cold chain had been broken.

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## Dave A

Jobs are on the line.



> About 800 workers face retrenchment at BHP Billiton's Bayside aluminium smelter in Richards Bay, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) said on Tuesday.
> 
> Spokesperson Mziwakhe Hlangani said management had confirmed that it would be issuing final notices to the affected workers at the weekend and the retrenchments would be effected on April 1.
> 
> The development follows Eskom's demand that big electricity consumers reduce their power consumption by 10%.
> 
> He said the drastic decision to lay-off metalworkers took place at a time when Numsa had made earnest appeals to the African National Congress and the minerals and energy parliamentary committee to intervene, as planned retrenchments were connected to the countrywide power crisis.
> 
> Rather than ensuring that other feasible alternatives were considered -- such as buying big industrial power generators -- the resources company once intimated that it planned to relocate its smelters to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the union charged.
> ...

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## duncan drennan

I'm quite concerned about the words flying around the proposed electricity tariff hike.

We're being told (via the media) that the tariff hike will stop load shedding. Now I'm sure Eskom would deny this, but let's quickly look at the implications.

If a tariff hike will stop load shedding, that means that the current (as in today) problem we have is not a capacity one, but that Eskom cannot afford to continue their operations (inputs costs are higher than what they are allowed to sell electricity for).

If that is the case, then Eskom is not load shedding to ensure capacity, but is load shedding to save money (it costs them more to produce electricity than they can sell it for).

If that is the case, we are being raped by Eskom and the government is aiding and abetting.

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## murdock

at least some people are getting rich quick selling generators and invertors...i spoke to someone at tedelex they are assembling 350 unit a day and cannot keep up with the supply... at between 4 and 5 thousand for the small unit and between 6 and 7 thousand rand for the bigger unit...they have purchased 35 million rands worth of batteries to try keep up with the demand...so its not all bad news for everyone...

generator prices have increased from R4500 for a 5.5kva unit to Ralmost R10000.00 if you can find one...and i hear zuma mentioned a more enviroment friendly elctricity supply does he know that a generator produces more than 5 times the amount of fumes than a motor car...and i cant say it must be too pleasant for people working close to the companies who have had big  diesel generators fitted...because of the noise... and with the petrol and diesel price going up again running these unit is not very cost effective...this is my take on this issue...i believe the man on the street just doesnt know what the powers that be are up to.

i also dont know what we are going to do in 5 years when this problem becomes an even bigger one because of expansion...

why are we being punished...being told if we dont save 10 % we will have load shedding how are the people who caused this whole fiasco being punished with big bonuses???

it doesnt bother me any more my house and office have battery backup lights...invertors...and a generator which i havent had to use yet...but they are in place just in case.

my problem is working on sites where the power goes off while i am working on the system...then comes back on...i had to leave a site last week without testing the installation because of the load shedding...and unfortunately i didnt get lucky...we had a problem on the site...by the time the power came back on i had already left for the weekend and only managed to get back to the site on monday...thank goodness no one was injured and the equipment on site wasnt damaged.

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