It is a known fact that energy drives the economy of the world by enabling processes and activities that support economic development. In fact, its paucity would impend the social-economic growth of a society . According to constrained energy or electricity supply would eventually cripple all government operations and productive systems thus freezing the economy. Electricity shortages are a reality of everyday life in many parts of the world. Even developed countries are no exception to this challenge. However, these events do not usually last for a long time. In developing countries, especially in the continent of Africa, building new generation capacity may take many years and other factors (e.g. drought, civil strife, lack of financing) contributing to power shortages are often not easily resolved . The deficit of electricity supply in the developing countries often results in a high rate of electric power outages, electricity theft and use of wood fuel as an energy substitute.
Load shedding is one of the means to address an electrical energy deficit. It is mainly a supply side intervention to reduce energy consumption in which power is completely cut off from the consumer for a certain period of time. This technique has little active consumer participation. It is often not liked by the consumers as evidenced in. Periods of load shedding are scheduled to balance energy supply and demand. The impact is distributed among a wide base of customers.
Energy efficiency and demand response are among other load management techniques. In these techniques, consumers reduce energy consumption in response to incentives and energy prices. These techniques require decentralized action and are often difficult to implement than load-shedding .
Zambia, a country in Sub-Sahara Africa whose 99.9% electric power production depends on hydro resources is currently experiencing an energy deficit. This is primarily due to insufficient water at the reservoirs of its two major hydro power stations namely Kariba North Bank and Kafue Gorge. According to the ministerial statement , the country has been experiencing an energy deficit due to the low rainfall experienced during the 2014/2015 rainy season. The Engineering Institute of Zambia (EIZ) Report on load shedding conducted in September 2015 indicated that apart from poor rainfall patterns of 2014/2015 rainy seasons other factors such as the spilling of 19.9 billion cubic meters of water from the Kariba North Bank Reservoir in 2011 may also have been a contributing factor.
The supply of electricity to different consumer groups in Zambia is the obligation of the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (ZESCO). It is the main agency that has been mandated by the government to generate, supply and distribute electricity. In June 2015, arising from the deficit, ZESCO started a stringent load shedding program to reduce energy consumption in order to preserve water behind the dams and avoid a complete shutdown of the generating plant. In this program most residential customers are without electricity nominally eight hours per day. The efficacy of the program at reducing consumption is not apparent, as customers may shift or otherwise adjust their energy use in response to the load shedding.
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