Azlady, that would be great. Most big companies have generators, the hospitals too. Our power was out for two hours again at work today - it is so frustrating!!!! They say this is going to go on till 2012. Don't know if I can handle it!!!

Hi Kinty, apparently the demand for electricity has outweighed the production!!! We need more power stations - when that will happen who knows. There is a sort of schedule - but we don't know when more power is being used so we don't know when it will be cut. Sounds very confusing!!

We have that problem in Arizona when we have high temperatures for especially long periods, as last year when 100's started about March and were still about that in November.  We have what are called "brown outs"  and it works much better than total loss of electrical.  It gives everyone enough electricity for refrigerator, a/c (cause with 115 degrees,it's a necessity), and for basics, like opening your garage door to get car out and then leave it out.  You can't sit on your computer or watch tv, but you can save food and keep cool enough to be safe.  No thermostats on 75, but 85 or 90 is good compared to 115 and rising!

Maybe someone could suggest that over there!

Oh Janine, that is horrible! I know I've been to the Eskom (not sure of the spelling) page to kind of get a look at what is going on, and they claim they have schedules, but from everything I was hearing, and what we would see at the cams, it all seemed to be "willy nilly". I thought maybe I was missing something I remember one winter here in Florida they did that to us due to unexpected shortfall for a extremely bad cold snap. It was no fun for about 3 days. But thank goodness they have planned better and that hasn't happened again. They called ours, "Rolling Blackouts". Keeping you all in my prayers that a solution is found soon, and that the people will not suffer the consequences for someone else's greed and stupidity.

Auntie Lyn wrote:

Thank you Raymond for letting us know. You don't happen to know what schedule they have Nkorho and EP on do you? Many of us are trying to figure out when your shutdowns are scheduled? Wish there was some way we could help you with the power problems

Hi Aunty Lyn

We are having huge arguments with our electricity supplier here in SA as they are not giving us schedules, and the ones they have given us they are not sticking to so we are having our power cut willy nilly,  we have a motor business and we have customers cars on the hoists for services and repairs, and when the power is out we can not give our customers their cars, this is just one of the small problems this is causing, if we knew what time and when we could make sure that none of the vehicles were stuck on the hoists.

This just gives you some idea of the cahos in SA right now.

Must be very difficult living under those conditions, especially if you are not given scheduled power cuts.  Why is this happening, is it a usual thing at this time of year because of heavy usage?  Or is the weather this year a big factor?

I should have started with good morning everyone.  LOL 

I must say that living in SA the load shedding is a real problem. We were without power for 2 1/2 hours at work yesterday and no power at home for that period. Then the power was out from 7:45 till 10:00 last night. It is causing chaos on our roads, not to mention what it is doing to our manufacturing businesses. Enough moaning - let me get ready for work before the power goes again!!!!

Actually, it is called load shedding and is about methods to distribute power when power supplies are very low.

One article here: http://allafrica.com/stories/200801160655.html

 and this one too: http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-25_2236152

Excuse my ignorance but what is low shading?