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Thursday, May 19, 2022

Loadshedding in South Africa

 Good morning dear Blogger friends. I've finally finished leading and coaching my sixth Weigh-Less group.  Tomorrow I do my last group in the Valley. Then I am finished until Tuesday 2pm. 

Meanwhile, the bane of a South Africa's life is the continuous Loadshedding - especially during the winter months. Our energy supplier is under severe constraints and we, the consumer have to suffer the consequences. 

We generally have 2.5 to 5 hours of loadshedding in a day. We are given our schedules and have to do a dance between having electricity and power outages.

If you are the type of person who doesn't like surprises, you need to plan for these periods. I am one such a person. I ensure that my laptop, smartphone and wireless dongles are always charged. I have two chargers plugged into the cigarette lighter in my car. I also recently bought a power pack which I keep charged. Just as a back-up! 

I also have a strong handheld torch; I have a headlamp and I have a nifty light in a jar. All of these are battery operated. 

My light in a jar shines very brightly in the dark
This is what the jar light looks like 

Here on the farm if we have loadshedding from 6 to 8.30am, that is fine. The generator is started in order for the cows to be milked. The same goes for loadshedding between 14h00 and 16h30 when the second milking of the day takes place

Any times out of these periods, we have NO power. 

As you can imagine this phenomena has played havoc with businesses. The traffic lights (called robots here) normally don't work for a day after loadshedding! And of course, your household appliances take a beating with the irregular power.

Up at my holiday accommodation, my guests always have power. The owner next door has a large generator which kicks in automatically when loadshedding starts.

HAPPY THURSDAY TO YOU ALL! 


7 comments:

  1. How intensely frustrating and difficult for you. I am so sorry.

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  2. Jo you certainly are trying to do all you can in these difficult circumstances you find yourself and I feel very sorry for the farmers and others when power goes off at the time they need it most. Sorry I have not been commenting much recently. It is because my daughter had a bad car accident and I was asked to come over to the Isle of Wight to help her and the family so it is keeping me quite busy and will be here for a while still.

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  3. Hello, Jo

    You sound very prepared for when you lose the power. I have never heard of loadshedding. I have heard of rolling power outages in the big cities. We have a small generator for the we have power outages, usually from a storm. Take care, have a great day!

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  4. I have never heard the word loadshedding, here we call it rolling blackouts and rotating outages. your word makes sense and I understand why it is called that. in Florida we have it in summer because of air conditioning, other parts of the country have it in the winter and some have it in both seasons. but not for hours like yours. our rolling blackouts here are never more than an hour. you are prepared just like I would be if that was happening. I like the lights in the jar.. great idea. i also have the car charger and the back up power pack. it can be charged in house or car.. it has saved me a few times with my phone

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  5. I can see that being a big headache.

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  6. Good thing there's a lot of battery options and let you know. I love my solar power.

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  7. Gosh that sounds very inconvenient. Hope it can be improved on soon.

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Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to leave a comment. I appreciate your feedback. Jo