Johannesburg utility City Power says it is losing about R3.6 million per day as a result of the rolling blackouts.
Eskom has implemented stage four rolling blackouts on Tuesday morning, citing a breakdown of five generators at five different power stations.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says the loss in millions is a result of the damage of equipment during power restoration, theft, as well as labour costs.
“We are under extreme pressure due to this load shedding and obviously we have had to conduct some desktop study to see how much we are losing to load shedding. We realized that we are losing about R3.6 million per day due to load shedding.”
“We are expecting this number to go higher because of the extensive load shedding this year. Most of our daily losses are driven by issues of labour cost which include the overtime when we have to call back some of the teams,” explains Mangena.
Current energy crisis has taken SA to the tipping point:
Ramaphosa has faith in the leadership of Eskom
Meanwhile, on Monday, the Presidency said President Cyril Ramaphosa continues to have faith in the management of power utility Eskom as South Africa continues to endure rolling blackouts.
South Africa’s electricity crisis is said to be a main drag on the economy, costing the country billions each time Eskom is unable to keep the power on.
The effects of rolling blackouts have been felt more by small businesses that struggle to keep up with the increasing input costs during the power cuts.
The South African Reserve Bank says it expects the rolling blackouts to shave about one percentage point from economic growth this year.
Despite the new interventions to mitigate the power cuts like adding new renewable energy capacity, Eskom says South Africa will likely have to put up with the blackouts for the next three years.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told the media in Pretoria that issues affecting the utility are complex.
Presidency gives an update on matters of public interest:
Additional reporting by Glorious Sefako-Musi
