South Africa's Department of Minerals and Energy has published for comment regulations in terms of the Electricity Regulations Act of 2006 "to minimise electricity load-shedding and blackouts, thereby improving the quality of supply.
Although the document does not include any activities specific to datacenters, there are proposed provisions, to prohibit, in respect of space heating, ventilation and cooling in commercial and residential buildings, not later than the year 2010, a heating, ventilation and cooling system that does not incorporate a facility for the licensee to remotely control its supply of electricity.
If approved, this will allow Eskom, South Africa's incumbent electricity provider and local authorities, to have some control over the demand-side power consumption of datacenters.
According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, global power consumption for servers and datacenters is 14,000MW, whilst Johannesburg consumes 3,600MW daily. In comparison, the Mozal aluminum reportedly uses 2,100MW a day.