Today whilst out and about in the area I noticed the traffic lights were off and that is quite normal for South Africa. Either the cables have been stolen which is very common or the grid is down in that area. Only this evening did I hear the noise of generators and had no idea the power had been off the entire day. When you have solar you are unaware of the lives the others around you are living and it is rather grim as electricity is not guaranteed.
I mentioned this to my family and they checked the electricity app called EskomSePush which is a play on words for a rude Afrikaans word. Hard name to forget once you heard it once so the app is rather popular. The power in our area had been off since 3am this morning and was still down at 7pm this evening and has just recently been restored.
Over the last few weeks we have been having the normal mid afternoon and evening highveld thunder storms which can be rather violent with spectacular displays of lightning followed by heavy down pours that can lead to flash flooding.
With the serious delays from when the power goers down until it is restored you start to wonder what is a good turn around time. I suppose each job is different and fault finding is what takes the time. Is the go slow on repairs being done on purpose as areas being down takes pressure off the grid and thus there is no need for load shedding. Convenient as the utility provider can blame cable theft instead of an incompetent electricity provider diverting the blame from themselves.
This case above sounds rather extreme and just bad luck on that particular area and why it lasted nearly 2 full days to restore the power. With my area today it must have been 17 or 18 hours with no power and this is too long when electricity is a service everyone requires.
When I see updated reports like these with more than 60% of faults lasting longer than 24 hours I am concerned as it does affect me even when I am virtually off the grid with solar. Prices of items rise as many shops have back up power and those costs are carried by the consumers who buy the products. We are all paying for this in an around about way and one would be naive to think otherwise.
The only reason why the public put up with this and have no choice because there is no competition and is controlled by government run enterprises. If utility services like electricity and water were opened up to the private sector the problems would improve immediately. Those private companies would have security teams monitoring for stolen cables which is a big part of the failings currently. Crime is that rampant and very little is being done about this leading to people presuming this is an inside job because how can this still be happening in todays world with the technology that is available.
The response repair times have moved over the last 5 years from 2-4 hours and are now more often than not over 12 hours and possibly would be considered lucky if completed within 24 hours. You do start to think this is how they are getting by with no load shedding by making sure entire areas are not repaired immediately so those areas with out power are doing what would be their turn of a planned power cut. No fingers can be pointed at an incompetent government and they can conveniently blame crime instead.
