With load shedding continuing to inconvenience South Africans daily, the likelihood of certain institutions such as schools, medical facilities and police stations being exempted from power outages remains uncertain.

On Friday, the Pretoria High Court issued an order effectively exempting these facilities from load shedding. Government was also instructed to provide alternative energy supplies – a matter the state would need to find an immediate interim solution to.

The Department of Public Enterprises has been given 60 days to come up with a plan to protect these facilities from load shedding.

Energy expert Adil Nchabeleng says from a technical standpoint, the judgement doesn’t make any sense. Nchabeleng adds that Eskom would need to revamp its entire infrastructure and distribution networks to be able to comply with this ruling.