South Africa’s cash-strapped state-run power company Eskom said on Thursday (February 5), it’s again implementing rolling blackouts after losing power at five of its generating units.
Eskom said it needed to reduce demand by 2,000 megawatts and would be plunging large areas of Johannesburg into darkness from early morning until 2100GMT.
The disruption was noticeable on the streets with traffic lights out at many major intersections, while businesses were left struggling to cope.
Popular restaurant Nando’s was forced to turn customers away during what’s usually its busiest trading hours.
Restaurant manager Craig Monaig lamented the fact that the restaurant would have to throw away most of their stock.
“Our sales start from ten till one o’clock during lunch, we are surrounded by offices so we have lost about sixteen thousand rands ($1418.29) and on our stock we are going to discard most of our stock due to temperature laws”.
Likewise, Barber shop owner AJ Musaba said he was unable to serve his customers.
“People are coming in and go home because there’s no electricity, we have been sitting here since morning till now as we speak so there’s nothing here…it’s affecting [Business] because we also we trying to make something you know what I mean, it’s killing our business that right”.
Earlier this the year state-run power utility warned the public that South Africa’s power reserves are all but exhausted and rolling blackouts will be an inevitable part of life for three years.
South Africa has been hamstrung by power shortages, which have curtailed output and are seen as a deterrent to foreign investment.
Last year it suffered its worst outages since 2008, hurt by outdated infrastructure and plant failures.
Local shop owners and restaurateurs are bearing the brunt of the power cuts, which leave many businesses running at a loss.
Chief economist at Econometrix Dr Azaar Jammine said the the black outs would are a blow to the country’s overall production, but smaller businesses are the hardest hit.
“Without a doubt there are some businesses especially small businesses that loose production that can never be regained, businesses especially in food, restaurants and in butcheries and others who need refrigeration, load shedding can be can be extremely damaging,” he said.
Power outages in South Africa also have global market implications given it’s the world’s top platinum producer and a major producer and exporter of commodities such as coal and gold.
“Load shedding now is impairing longer term economic growth in five, seven, ten years time, if we don’t invest now we won’t have the higher growth rates that we need in the longer term,” Dr Jammine added.
South African power demand typically ranges from around 30,000 to 35,000 megawatts, so the country’s reserves to keep the lights on are only around 3 percent.
According to Eskom engineers such controlled outages are needed to prevent a collapse of the grid, otherwise there could be outages of up to two weeks in order to reboot the system.
(Reuters)
