Good news for the candle industry, bad news for South Africans – Eskom is implementing load shedding again today, following a number of plant breakdowns.

At the moment, we’re actually on stage four load shedding. If you didn’t know that, you need to get on board with one of the load shedding apps available, so you’re not left in the dark.

According to BusinessTech, load shedding is occurring because the power system is constrained following technical difficulties, and is done to prevent “a total collapse or blackout”, which really sets the mind at ease.

While you know that load shedding is irritating, what you may not know is exactly how much all of this is impacting the South African economy.

Energy analyst Chris Yelland warned that stage 2 load shedding of 2,000MW is set to cost South Africa’s productive economy R2 billion daily, the Citizen reported.

“The amount of electricity reserves are currently low due to a poor performance of the six generation units at the Medupi power station.

“Although you are dealing with new units, there are breakdowns in new plants due to the design and execution of the project. Problems in the boilers and dust handling plants can be technically traced back to the construction phase,” Yelland said.

Stage two load shedding costs us around R2 billion per day. There’s a staggering sum of money down the pisser.

[Yelland] said that the “cost of R2 billion for 13 hours daily in the country’s productive economy due to the stage 2 load shedding of 2,000MW is something that could have been averted”, citing a lack of skills at the state owned entity.

Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec, said that these losses are really going to hurt further down the line:

“Given the parlous state of Eskom’s financial position, load shedding could persist into 2019 and if it was as extreme as in early 2008, GDP for Q1 2019 could see growth cut by as much as a third to a half.”

Time to break out the board games and get some stiff drinks ready.

It’s going to be an interesting year.

[source:businesstech]