Business & load shedding- what you can do

Load shedding is a pain at the best of times. For businesses it can be detrimental to productivity and profit. In this article, we’ll list some proactive ways to manage electricity outages.

Eskom has already warned consumers that load shedding will be bad from August 2021 until year end (possibly longer.) Great. Without making proper plans to combat this, loss of income is sure to follow.

Why is this (still) happening?

Since November 2007, South Africans have experienced electricity problems. It’s been a long 14 years that businesses and consumers have had to be patient. With no end in sight, the question we all want answered is “Why are we still load shedding?”

This article by News24 gives a great explanation of what led to the power crisis initially and how it’s developed into a catastrophe for our developing nation. In a nutshell, the energy crisis was caused by mismanagement of resources. This includes lack of maintenance on infrastructure.

What can you do about it?

There are 2 options here:

1. Either going off the grid (as suggested by this expert)
2. Or mitigating the effects of having no power.

Whilst there are many advantages of going off the grid, that option doesn’t exist for many business owners and consumers. Read on for our curated advice on how to ensure your business survives load shedding-

Know the schedule

Fortunately there are some excellent resources that make these schedules easily accessible.

One such resource is the EskomSePush mobile app. The app is simple to use and provides you with notifications of upcoming load shedding. You can also follow Eskom (or your electricity provider) on social media to stay up-to-date with schedules and announcements.

Knowing the schedule will help you plan scheduled jobs around power outages. You could even ask staff to work from home to mitigate the loss of productivity, which brings us to the next point-

Work remotely

Encourage staff to work remotely where their residence falls outside of your office’s planned load shedding schedule. This can help workers stay on top of their work load without having to battle issues of not having power.

Inverters help avoid disruption

There are 3 types of inverters:

1. Sine wave (or “pure” sine wave)
2. Modified sine wave (actually a modified square wave) and
3. Square wave

A pure sine wave is what your local municipality provides in the form of electricity.

Top Tip : When purchasing an inverter, always ensure the current is as “pure” as possible to avoid feeding unstable current into your electrical appliances.

If you’re looking to purchase a pure sine inverter with battery, check out this useful link.

Preserve your computers & appliances

Always ensure you’ve switched off and unplugged your appliances and PCs before load shedding hits. This will stop any power surges to your appliances when the power is restored. These power surges can wreak havoc with your hardware and appliances.

Battery operated lights

If you don’t have an inverter, consider getting some battery operated light bulbs for your office. These will help with avoiding accidents in the workplace. You can also make use of torches and lanterns if you prefer- either way, it’s safer than using candles.

Prevent data loss

This can be mitigated if you’re aware of your schedule. Setting up local saving solutions to USBs and the like can assist in ensuring no data is lost while working. Make sure you set up automatic saving on your programs to minimise any loss of data when the power goes out.

And there you have it, useful tips on how to mitigate the effects of load shedding on your business.