The owner of Durban’s Oceans Mall and Sibaya Casino, Vivian Reddy says he spends close to R30 million a year on diesel due to load-shedding and predicts that power cuts will be part of South African’s lives for the next five years.

The KwaZulu-Natal businessman was one of many private sector stakeholders who met the minister in the Presidency responsible for electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, in Durban on Tuesday to discuss energy challenges and interventions.

The cost to keep a business running

Reddy said businesses in KZN were struggling and that in a year the Oceans development in Umhlanga spent R15m on diesel to run generators and ensure that the businesses were not interrupted by the outages, while the Sibaya Casino spent R12m.

He said the government was aware of these challenges and the exorbitant costs to keep businesses running during load-shedding that sometimes occurred many times a day.

“As a result, the private sector is taking the lead. At Sibaya Casino we are having to look at other alternatives. We are looking at solar and gas. We are not the only ones who are looking at these other options, but we still experience pushback as there are not enough transmission lines to link the energy back to Eskom and that’s a big problem,” said Reddy.

Load-shedding not going away soon

He said that the minister had the right attitude to come up with solutions but that he could be more honest about when load-shedding would end instead of telling the public what they wanted to hear.

“Load-shedding will not just disappear. It will be here for a long time but with partnerships with the private sector I believe it can be lessened. I predict that we are still about five years away from the end of load-shedding,” said Reddy.

Peter Thembane from South African Breweries, requested that the minister be more specific on how many kilowatts were available, and when, so that businesses could plan better and be part of the solution.

Many felt there was too much red tape to penetrate the energy-producing sector and secure partnerships with government.

Massive job losses predicted

The minister agreed with the business sector that load-shedding crippled productivity and affected workers’ wages negatively. He said it was projected that 840 000 job losses are expected in 2024 as a direct result of load-shedding, an increase from the 640 000 jobs lost last year.

Ramokgopa also highlighted that the manufacturing and agriculture sectors were most affected by power outages.

“I also understand that South Africa is losing international investors who are shying away as we are being viewed as unreliable because of the energy crisis that we face.”

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He told business people that he understood what challenges were brought by power cuts and promised interventions that would alleviate the situation. However, he said load-shedding was necessary during the maintenance period, which was the route taken to end the energy crisis.

Maintenance = power cuts

Ramokgopa said the maintenance of Eskom plants would prevent permanent breakdowns of power stations. He added that the risk of the maintenance intervention was that load-shedding was inevitable as shutting down power was necessary to allow for maintenance to occur.

He said it was expected that the maintenance of power stations would start to decrease from March, resulting in fewer planned power switch-offs.

This will create up to 2 500klW additional capacity into the generation system support.

KZN Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube said she was pleased to get input from the private sector and looked forward to partnering with them to get KZN as off-the-grid as possible.