Imilender's tour in Sub-saharan africa

The SA power crisis continues. Last thursday was the worst day in the history. Eskom was forced to shed of 4000 MW of power as 25% of the national production capacity was out of use due to ruotine maintenance, faults at power stations and wet coal. We were for 6 hours straight without power and got to test out our inverter. It worked very nicely and we had electricity in our lights, we could use microwave to heat up food and we even had our Internet connection up. It was quite a relieve to have some power even during the power cut.

After that we have had no powercuts as the gold and platinum mines were closed as Eskom could not quarantee their power supply. The result of the power cuts were that platinum and gold prices went to all time high. Only now on wednesday the mines are starting operations again as Eskom is promising that they could have power again. Of course the general public is fearing if it will lead to more blackouts in residential areas.

The blackouts has also lead to new innovative ways to make money. Some people are waiting for the blackouts and during one go and steal the cables. They then go and sell the cable for scrap metal. Generator and UPS sales have scyrocketed and electricians are all busy installing them. Some smaller gated communities and single standing houses are fearing criminals as they loose their security systems during the blackout. Fortunately we are living in Dainfern where they do have a contingency plan for blackouts. Our security has backup generators and our security can operate as well during a blackout as when Eskom is providing the power.

The big question on everyones lips at the moment is, how will this country cope with the load shedding. We had couple of quite days with no load shedding on Sunday and Monday, but after that they are back. Load shedding is a constant topic in the media at the moment. Last week the human rights council complaint that the poorer former black communities were more influenced by the cuts than the richer former white communities. It seems that as an outcome Escom has been scheduling more cuts to also our area. Yesterday we had cuts from 10-12, from 16-18 and even a short one at eight. This morning started with another cut at 6.30.

It seems that nobody is unaffected by the cuts. The rail company had couple of carriages burned down by angry commuters who got fed up when the train stopped for 2 hours due to load shedding. In Capetown hundreds of tourists were stuck hanging midair in cable cars as that area was under loadshedding. Even hospitals are having to postpone some non critical procedures as they cannot know if they operating rooms will loose power due to load shedding. Fortunately they do have generators so they can still manage the critical patients. The funny thing is that even the biggest mall (at least according to my guide book) in souther hemisphere, the Sandton City mall is affected by daily power cuts. The mall does have generator power to light up some lamps and operatate elavators, but all the shops are forced to close as there is not enough power for them. I personally ended up trying to sort out my banking there three times last week and each time it was affected by a power cut. It is weird walking in a large shopping mall that is almost dark. The hairdressers are still trying to accomodate their customers by pushing them into the mall's main passage ways and using the emergency lighting. :->

Traffic is getting really terrible as there are tens of major intersection without power. The traffic still flows, but it is a lot slower. Fortunately the Johannesburg metropolitan police promised to deploy police men to guide the traffic in the worst intersections.

The whole problem seems to be mainly caused by couple of factors. The first factor is that Eskom asked for funding to build new power stations over 10 years ago, but then the goverment had declined their pleas. They were hoping to have independent sector to build the stations. However the electricity price was (and still is) so low that there was no business case for independent sector. Eskom was just few years back given finance to build stations, but it takes several years to build a station. So there is no surplus at the moment. The second reason why this problem hit the country right now is that Eskom is doing routine maintenance during summer when the consumption has generally been the lowest. However as the economy has been booming for several years, nowdays there is a lot more airconditioning load than there used to be.

Well I got my inverter installed yesterday, so no we have light and power even during a blackout!

It's interesting how dependand we are on electricity. Everything nowdays runs on electricity from computers to cleaning utilities. And if power is out, the whole economy pretty much stops working. South Africa is currently faced with a situation that the demand for electicity is higher than the production capacity and therefore the national electicity supplier, Eskom, has had to resort to load shedding. The current power shortage is 2000MW.

Load shedding basically means that they intentionally cut of certain parts of the power distribution network to reduce comsumption. These black outs are scheduled and informed on the eskom website. The scheduled blackouts are always for two hours and the schedule depends on the level of shortfall that the network is experiencing.

These blackouts affect day-to-day life in various means. Larger offices are often fitted with own generators or batteries & inverters to power up the computers and internet connections during a blackout. However not all. For example we were in a bank on monday trying to setup internet access for our accounts when a powercut hit, and the entire bank was closed, as was the entire mall in which the bank was in. The traffic lights will of course also switch themselves off during the blackout. However this country is so used to blackout that traffic flows suprisingly well through the intersection anyhow. They even have a rule on how to behave in an intersection if the traffic lights are off. That intersection is treated as a fourway stop and the one who stopped first, will go first. Basically meaning that there will always get one car from each side street out at turn.

Well now we need to decide how we'll handle our own blackouts. Shall we install an inverter or a generator...

My appologies for being silent for over a month. I was just back in Finland and had a huge amount of things to setup.

Well now I have been back to South Africa for a bit over a week and I'm starting to get things settled. When you move to a new country there is a lot off hassle. One of the biggest discomforts arises from the fact that it takes only 1 day for people to move from country to another, but for goods it takes a lot longer. So the difficulty is in what to do in the meantime. There is basically three options. Either rent a temporary furnished lodging for you and your family for that 4-6 weeks it takes to get the goods, or then live in an empty house. The third option is to turn into a shopping maniac and shop all the furniture you're going to need in first two weeks. We basically chose a combination of options 2 & 3. We have some goods arriving and when we moved in, all we had was a bed and a mattress. Now we have bought some more stuff and the house slowly starts to look inhabitable. However we are still lacking all the stuff that makes home feel like home, like personal artifacts.

Living in an empty house is a lot more easier for the working one, but when you're moving with a family that includes small childer it puts quite a bit of strain on the ones who stay at home. If it was just a couple, your spouse could go and see all the sights and spend time outside the home, but having a small child forces you to spend quite a bit time at the home as well, and during the nap time of the baby all you practically have is that empty house.

Well fortunately time will cure that problem. I just tracked one of our shipments and it has already arrived to Johannesburg! Now we just need to wait for the customs to release it.