Now it's Defcon 3

Employees working around the clock, floating powerhouses and four different time zones are some of the proposals organised business has suggested to stabilise the electricity supply.

The proposals came just hours before Eskom announced stage three load shedding yesterday, forcing the parastatal to cut as much as 4000 megawatts. Load shedding for City of Cape Town customers remained at stage two.

Yesterday afternoon, the power utility had lost a third of its generating capacity, its worst loss since 2008.

According to Khulu Phasiwe, Eskom's spokesman, by late yesterday there were 10500MW of outages caused by generators tripping. This, he said, was coupled with a planned cut of 4000MW for maintenance.

Hours before Eskom announced the cuts, Peggy Drodskie, acting CEO of the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said business had come up with a raft of suggestions that could help solve the crisis, but it needed support from trade unions and the government.

Immediate plans included:

• A new shift system for businesses and employees, which would enable night work - without the usual overtime payments - when electricity demand was low;
• Working around the clock at the Medupi and Kusile power station construction sites, to ensure they came on line as soon as possible;
• Dividing South Africa into four time zones to spread peak times;
• Promulgating the Independent System and Market Operator Bill, which would break Eskom's stranglehold on electricity generation and distribution and get independent power producers almost instantly involved. The bill was binned by the ANC at its lekgotla last week; and
• Getting Eskom to do enough maintenance on its best power stations. The chamber also wants Eskom and local government to stick to outage schedules, and called for all industries that generate their own power to be allowed to scale up their operations and sell excess electricity back into the grid. This could bring relief in as soon as four weeks.

Over the long term, the chamber suggests:

• Barges moored off the coast to provide power to the grid; and
• Better funding arrangements for local authorities, because many municipalities use a mark-up on electricity as a way to raise money.

The chamber is putting all its suggestions to the inter-departmental "war room" chaired by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.

But the chamber is likely to face resistance from unions.

"You can't break existing contracts with employees and use load shedding as an excuse," said Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven.

Sizwe Pamla, spokesman for the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union, said: "They shouldn't be coming up with half-baked ideas; all this is, is glorified slavery."

Attempts to get comment from the government proved fruitless.

Stages of pain

Eskom implemented stage three of load shedding last night after losing a third of its generating capacity.

The stages relate to the number of megawatts the utility has to reduce supply by during load shedding.

• Stage one: Eskom has to "shed" up to 1000 megawatts. For customers, it means a single power outage of not less than two hours in a 24-hour period.
• Stage two: Eskom has to reduce up 2000 megawatts from the grid. This can mean two outages over a24-hour period.
• Stage three: Eskom has to shed up to 4000 megawatts and there might be three power cuts in 24 hours.