Is your business IT ready for load shedding?

Load shedding is not just an inconvenience. For your IT equipment, every unplanned power cut is a risk. Servers crash mid-write and corrupt databases. Hard drives suffer from repeated forced shutdowns. Network equipment drops connections and sometimes does not come back cleanly.

Most Cape Town businesses have learned to keep torches and gas stoves handy. But the IT side is often the last thing that gets sorted, and it is usually the most expensive thing to fix after the fact.

What load shedding actually does to your IT

The danger is not just the power going off. It is the combination of the sudden shutdown and the power surge when electricity returns.

Hard crashes corrupt data. When a server loses power while writing to a database, that database can become corrupted. The same applies to accounting software, email servers, or any application that stores data locally. A corrupted database can take hours to repair, if it can be repaired at all.

Repeated shutdowns kill hardware. Hard drives are particularly vulnerable. Every unclean shutdown puts stress on the drive mechanism. Solid-state drives (SSDs) handle power loss better, but even they can lose data that was mid-write. Power supplies, motherboards, and other components also degrade with repeated power cycling.

Power surges damage equipment. When Eskom restores power, the initial surge can exceed what your equipment is rated for. Surge protectors help with minor spikes, but they wear out over time and many people never replace them. A good surge protector is not something you buy once and forget.

Network equipment gets confused. Routers, switches, and access points that lose power and restart do not always come back in the right order. A switch that starts before the router, or a server that boots before the domain controller, can cause network issues that persist even after everything has power again.

The minimum protection: a UPS

A UPS (uninterruptible power supply) is a battery that sits between your equipment and the wall socket. When the power goes out, the UPS takes over instantly, with no interruption to your equipment.

A UPS does two things:

It keeps equipment running during short outages. A brief dip or a few seconds of load shedding transition will not affect your server or workstation at all. The UPS absorbs it.

It gives time for a safe shutdown. For longer outages, the UPS provides enough battery time for your server to shut down properly. A clean shutdown means no data corruption, no forced restarts, and no hardware stress. Most server UPS units can be configured to trigger an automatic shutdown after a set time on battery.

What to protect with a UPS:

• Your server (this is the priority, not negotiable)
• Your networking equipment (router, main switch, WiFi access point)
• Critical workstations (only if they store local data or run essential applications)

You do not need a UPS on every desk. Laptops have their own batteries. Printers and monitors can simply be off during load shedding. Focus the UPS budget on the equipment that matters most.

UPS sizing matters. A UPS that is too small will not provide enough runtime for a safe shutdown. One that is massively oversized wastes money. Your IT support can calculate the right size based on the power draw of the equipment you need to protect.

Beyond UPS: backup and recovery

A UPS handles the immediate problem. But it does not protect you from everything.

If load shedding corrupts a database despite the UPS (batteries degrade over time and can fail), you need a current backup to restore from. If a power surge gets past the surge protector, you need a backup to recover the data from the damaged machine.

This is where proper backup becomes critical:

• Automatic, off-site backup means your data exists somewhere that is not affected by what happens at your office. If every piece of equipment in your office got fried by a surge (extreme, but it happens), your data is still safe.
• Versioned backup means you can restore from before the corruption happened. If today’s backup captured a corrupted database, you can go back to yesterday’s clean version.
• Tested backup means you know the restore actually works. An untested backup is just a hope.

For the full picture on backup options, see our guide on what business backup actually means.

Reducing your exposure with cloud services

Here is a practical truth about load shedding and IT: the less equipment you have in your office, the less load shedding can damage.

If your email, files, and collaboration tools are in Microsoft 365, they run in Microsoft’s data centres, not on a server under your desk. Load shedding at your office does not affect them. Staff can access everything from laptops (which have batteries) using mobile data (which does not need Eskom).

This is not an argument for moving everything to the cloud overnight. Some applications need to run locally. Some businesses have internet connections that are not reliable enough for full cloud dependence. But every workload you move off local hardware is one less thing that load shedding can break.

Common moves that reduce load shedding risk:

• Email to Microsoft 365 (if not already there). Most Cape Town businesses have made this move.
• File storage to OneDrive/SharePoint. Files sync to laptops and are accessible even when the server is off. Remember that sync is not backup though – see our article on why cloud sync is not backup.
• Accounting and line-of-business apps to cloud versions where available. Many South African accounting packages now offer cloud-hosted options.

A load shedding checklist for your office

Run through this list. Any “no” is a gap worth addressing:

1. Does your server have a UPS? Not a surge protector – an actual UPS with battery backup.
2. Is the UPS configured for automatic shutdown? If the battery runs out before the server shuts down, the UPS did nothing useful.
3. When was the UPS battery last replaced? UPS batteries typically last 2-4 years. After that, the runtime drops and the UPS may not protect you during a real outage.
4. Do your networking equipment (router, switch) have UPS protection? A server that stays on is not much use if the network is down.
5. Are your surge protectors still working? Surge protectors degrade after absorbing hits. Some have indicator lights. If yours have been through a few years of load shedding, they may not be protecting anything anymore.
6. Is your backup current and tested? If load shedding corrupts something, can you restore from yesterday’s backup? Have you actually tested it?
7. Do staff know what to do during load shedding? Save work, do not force-restart machines, switch to mobile data if needed. A two-minute briefing prevents most problems.
8. Is your internet backup-linked? Some fibre providers offer LTE failover. If your internet goes down with load shedding (some fibre boxes need power at the exchange), having a backup connection keeps cloud services available.

Check your load shedding readiness

We will review your power protection, backup, and cloud setup and tell you where the gaps are. Most businesses have at least one.

Get an IT Health Check

Or talk to us directly:

Call: 087 820 5005

WhatsApp: 081 526 1626

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Related reading

• Business backup: what it actually means and what you need
• Cloud sync is not backup: what small businesses get wrong
• Server down? What to do while you wait for IT