Stage 8 load shedding, according to business interest organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA), is virtually guaranteed to occur in the upcoming months. The group also warns that businesses that depend on diesel to continue operating during outages will be struck considerably harder because the lights could be out for up to half the day.
According to BLSA Chief Executive Busi Mavuso, unprecedented load shedding will not only have a negative financial impact on businesses.
“It is clear how this would affect the already low business confidence. This is hardly the kind of environment where corporations will make fresh investments. With growth experiencing yet another setback, that will contribute to lower overall economic performance,” she said.
While South Africa has been able to amend the Electricity Regulation Act to allow the private sector to build new generating plants at scale, other initiatives have stalled or completely gone off the rails. A request for proposals for battery storage has also been published, with bids due in July.
The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which serves as the plan for the whole energy sector, was supposed to have been updated from the 2019 edition, but Mavuso noted that despite assurances that we would receive the document in March, we are still awaiting its publication. businesstech
