The heading is a Chinese proverb my boss found, and one that is oh so appropriate...
I said I wasn’t going to complain about this; however my concern at the growing electricity shortage in my home land, South Africa, is beginning to niggle at the dark corners of my mind… s’quse the punny.
We have been experiencing Load Shedding… a term which all South African’s are now well familiar with. In case you’re wondering the definition for Load Shedding is:
Removal of pre-selected customer demand from a power system, as a result of the occurrence of an abnormal condition, in a effort to maintain the integrity of the system and minimize overall customer outages.
In other words, they’ve been cutting our electricity off during certain hours of the day and night for a couple hours at a time. Certain areas have had their electricity cut for many hours a day; however the end result is thus… South African’s are pissed off.
At the moment Eskom (our electricity supplier) and the Government are playing the blame game. Eskom says that they asked the Government to assist them with finding a solution to the electricity shortage years ago; the Government says it’s not up to them, its Eskom’s fault.
Ok, but let’s forget “who’s fault it is” for the moment. What are they going to do about the lack of coal, therefore the lack of energy produced that we all desperately need? The lack of electricity has cost this country millions; actually it’s probably more along the lines of hundreds of millions. Not to mention the fact that the Rand is taking a knock due to concerned foreign investors. Who wants to invest in a country that is supposedly a first world country that runs out of electricity? What happens when the Soccer World Cup rolls around in 2010? Is it going to be lights out for the thousands of tourists that arrive in South Africa?
What I find truly amazing is that we actually got to this point. I am shocked that we have actually gotten to a point where we have to go through something like this.
Ok, so my question is… what happens if it doesn’t get better? What happens if 2.5 hours of load shedding turns into 5 hours… or 15 hours… what happens if it turns into a week? No electricity for a week?
Hand me that candle dear sir, mine appears to be going out.
We have been experiencing Load Shedding… a term which all South African’s are now well familiar with. In case you’re wondering the definition for Load Shedding is:
Removal of pre-selected customer demand from a power system, as a result of the occurrence of an abnormal condition, in a effort to maintain the integrity of the system and minimize overall customer outages.
In other words, they’ve been cutting our electricity off during certain hours of the day and night for a couple hours at a time. Certain areas have had their electricity cut for many hours a day; however the end result is thus… South African’s are pissed off.
At the moment Eskom (our electricity supplier) and the Government are playing the blame game. Eskom says that they asked the Government to assist them with finding a solution to the electricity shortage years ago; the Government says it’s not up to them, its Eskom’s fault.
Ok, but let’s forget “who’s fault it is” for the moment. What are they going to do about the lack of coal, therefore the lack of energy produced that we all desperately need? The lack of electricity has cost this country millions; actually it’s probably more along the lines of hundreds of millions. Not to mention the fact that the Rand is taking a knock due to concerned foreign investors. Who wants to invest in a country that is supposedly a first world country that runs out of electricity? What happens when the Soccer World Cup rolls around in 2010? Is it going to be lights out for the thousands of tourists that arrive in South Africa?
What I find truly amazing is that we actually got to this point. I am shocked that we have actually gotten to a point where we have to go through something like this.
Ok, so my question is… what happens if it doesn’t get better? What happens if 2.5 hours of load shedding turns into 5 hours… or 15 hours… what happens if it turns into a week? No electricity for a week?
Hand me that candle dear sir, mine appears to be going out.
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