South Africa has now experienced over a decade and a half of loadshedding amidst the ongoing and worsening energy crisis. Recently, the High Court has issued a ruling demanding that certain facilities be exempt, or excluded, from these rolling blackouts.
Last week, the Pretoria High Court ruled that schools, hospitals and police stations should be exempt from loadshedding, after they found it to be a violation of our constitutional rights.
Excessive power outages are causing disruptions in teaching and learning, affecting healthcare and putting the safety of citizens at risk. However, Government has revealed that they will appeal this decision, and they have a strong case.
Exempting Certain Areas From Loadshedding
Kadri Nassiep, Executive Director of Energy at the City of Cape Town, stated that exemptions are routinely made for hospitals in emergency situations, as well as when the city is holding an event or levels of crime and congestion are higher than normal.
However, Nassiep goes on to say that the practicality of excluding schools is virtually impossible without excluding surrounding areas too. If every school was to be excluded, eventually no areas would be loadshedding, worsening the energy crisis and making efforts to lessen the demand on the grid pointless.
Grid technology has improved over the years. Areas used to have to be switched off by hand at the power station, but now some areas can be controlled remotely via computer systems. However, there are still many areas that need to be controlled manually, making exclusion a management nightmare.
Possible Solutions For Schools
The only plausible solution that can be offered at this point is generators, although the costs involved in this would be exponential. If public schools around the country were to be provided with generators, the costs of fuel, maintenance and running costs would far exceed any schools' budgets.
The University of Pretoria in particular, reportedly spends over R2 million per day to keep the lights on during stage 6.
With the price of diesel on the rise and the issue of who is going to foot these costs, this is not a practical solution either. These funds would better be spent on reducing loadshedding, rather than implementing a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
Nassiep says that although costly, an effective solution would be the use of alternative energy, like solar energy. Solar power is a great option for schools and would make managing the grid a lot easier, but this is not an easy fix.
Loadshedding Expected To Worsen
In 2022, the country battled over 200 days of loadshedding, increasing from 75 in 2021 and 54 in 2020. This year, South Africa has experienced loadshedding every single day, except for Human Right's Day on 21 March when power outages were suspended by Eskom.
Experts only anticipate that the crisis will worsen in the winter months, expecting us to surpass 150 days of consecutive outages, exceeding stage 6.
