​Written by Ethan White

 

Overview

Load shedding or South Africa's Energy crisis is a long, ongoing period of widespread blackouts of energy supply beginning in the later months of 2007. It is a prominent issue pestering many South Africans around the country and is not without its own issues. Many people are having trouble working well with the lack of electricity for 8 hours a day and the load shedding is affecting many small businesses that cannot afford generators or solar power to cope with the issue. In 2023, South Africa had experienced outages for 335 out of 365 days with estimates believing that the country had lost nearly R45 billion (in 2022 Rand) from 2007 to 2019. In this article, we will be reviewing the impacts of load shedding on different areas and discussing them.

 

Impacts

 

• Load shedding significantly disrupts production. It does this by causing unplanned downtime which can lead to reduced output, delayed orders and a decrease in productivity, it can also disrupt the supply chain. This means that manufacturers may struggle to meet customer demands which could cause a loss of customers. This can eventually lead to businesses being forced to shut down

• Load shedding also increases costs for manufacturers. This is because they must rely on backup power sources such as generators or solar panels which increases the amount of money manufacturers must spend due to upfront costs as well as maintenance, which therefore could increase product prices or reduce profits. 

• Small restaurants and services need to halt their activity for certain periods of time throughout the day which could hurt the amount of food or services they will provide

• When manufacturing business lead to problems, it can stunt development by causing job losses as well as reduced economic output

• Power surges can damage equipment used by people and businesses due to an increased flow of current resulting in shorts.

• Lack of wifi and communication can halt online processes such as online stores and banking, this can slow down the economy and development

• Lack of power also leaves people more vulnerable to online and in-person crime and theft due to the sudden loss of security.

 

Conclusion

Load shedding can lead to many different chains of events happening throughout the country that can stunt economic growth of manufacturing as well as small businesses that cannot afford back up energy. This can altogether hinder development of the country and economy.

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Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

https://codera.co.za/estimates-of-the-cost-of-load-shedding-in-sa/#:~:text=The%20most%20recent%20estimates%20we,2023Q1%20

https://www.southafricanbusiness.co.za/10/2023/manufacturing/the-impact-of-load-shedding-on-manufacturers/

https://loadshedding.eskom.co.za/

https://blog.ecoflow.com/za/how-does-load-shedding-affect-community/