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20 January 2023
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Hybrid: The small business slayer ■ Joe Dreyer
LOADSHEDDING THE BUSINESS
KILLER
“We cannot please everyone.” This was the outcome of the meeting held between the Greater Tzaneen Municipality (GTM), Agri Letaba, and the Tzaneen Chamber of Business last week. The meeting was called by the GTM to make clear their plans to manage the current nationwide power crisis through their current loadshedding schedule. It is still not clear why the GTM opted to invite only the Business Chamber representatives to this meeting and not the media. It is also not clear why, when the media did join the meeting, we were prevented from live streaming the meeting. We feel that it would speed up communication between the municipality and their residents, given that the media by default speaks directly to a large portion of the rate payers and it would eliminate the dilution of information, or misrepresentation of any key facts. We digress. Municipal management in attendance were the municipal manager, Donald Mhangwana, the newly appointed head of the Electrical Department Freedom Mthetwa - who thankfully replaced Sam Lelope who spent five years too long
at the head of this vital department, and Bheki Tshawe, one of the managers at the Electrical Department and chairperson of the basically defunct Energy Forum. How loadshedding is calculated The meeting started with a brief presentation by Mthetwa deciphering the Eskom situation and the need for loadshedding. He explained that the various “stages” indicated the number of Megawatts that needed to be shed in order to keep the system from collapsing. In other words, Stage 1 (1 000 Mega Watts) that needs to be shed, Stage 2 (2 000 Mega Watts), etc. According to the municipality, they are instructed by Eskom on how many Mega Watts they must shed and in accordance, they switch off the areas that consume enough power to make up the required Wattage. It is for this reason that they cannot switch off the residential areas during the day and leave the businesses to run at night and then switch the businesses off in the evenings and give the residents power. They must calculate which areas consume enough power combined, to shed the required amount. Continue on page 3
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