Description:

Speaker: Ludovica Mosillo 

Title: The impact of Load Shedding in South Africa

Abstract: Following the end of Apartheid in 1994, South Africa embarked on an ambitious electrification effort, connecting nearly 90% of its population to the electrical grid. However, the aging coal-powered supply system has struggled to meet the growing demand for electricity, resulting in a persistent threat of countrywide blackouts. To mitigate this risk in 2007, Eskom, the national power utility, introduced a schedule of rotating power outages (“Load Shedding”) to be enacted in periods of low supply. initially infrequent and of shorts duration, starting in 2019 Power interruptions became a frequent occurrence, with households experiencing an average of 1,343 hours of outages in 2023 alone. This project aims to analyze the consequences of this phenomenon on South African households and firms