Our partners weigh in on load shedding

Load shedding is definitely the news-maker of the year for 2023. You can barely attend a braai or open a news site without being confronted by people’s views on this crisis, which has a massive impact on our lives and our economy.

Our partners at epic ERP and Ami Underwriting Managers have weighed in on the topic with some interesting perspectives in their respective industries.

Epic posted a blog entitled How Can Software Help with Load Shedding?, which shares some insights into how load shedding affects businesses and how software may offer a solution. 

“Software and cloud-based solution providers have seen major advancement and improvement to assist in this very energy fluid environment,” says the article. “Epic ERP is one such service provider, with a growing arsenal of business software solutions that shed light (if not literally, then figuratively) on the state of power supply uncertainty.”

The article continues to unpack epic’s best-of-breed manufacturing execution system, Advanced MES, which provides improved recovery from power interruptions. 

It also allows managers to make changes to production schedules in real time. This is particularly useful when load shedding schedules are changed without notice and production planning needs to be amended in a hurry.

In an interview with Bruce Whitfield on Cape Talk radio, Ami CEO Christelle Colman brought her insurance perspective to the discussion.

“Load shedding is here to stay, (which) means that the insurance industry will need to adapt to this new reality,” she said. “One way insurers could do this is by re-evaluating their underwriting criteria, and potentially adjusting pricing based on the likelihood of loadshedding in different areas.

“More insurance companies could start pulling back and saying they can’t insure this anymore because it is becoming a risk that is too frequent and not unforeseen and sudden anymore.”

In addition, global reinsurers are refusing to extend cover to incidents related to national grid failure. As a result, insurers have pulled cover against such an event, which they say is possible, but not likely to occur.

In the meantime, South Africans continue to show our irrepressible spirit by making plans to overcome load shedding on a daily basis. We certainly are a resilient lot!

Stella is a marketing all-rounder. Her strengths lie in big-picture thinking and bringing it all together. She likes to work and train hard and will not shy away from a challenge. She is also Greek, so #winning!