Is ‘load shedding lite’ in progress?
Am
I right? It seems we’re experiencing ‘load shedding lite’ in Jo’burg at
present.
As
a company specialising in standby power solutions, we at Powermode advertise extensively
in various media including the web and other online forums giving us a high
profile in the power provisioning marketplace.
Perhaps
this is why, over past few weeks, we've been inundated with enquiries from potential
customers whose power has been cut for hours (even days) at a time.
Some
of the power outages were repeated over many days, according to the anxious householders
and business owners, almost all of whom were desperate for a standby power system
to meet their most urgent needs.
The
callers come from disparate areas including Jetpark/ Boksburg, Kelvin/ Marlboro,
Bryanston/ Dimension Data Campus, and Midrand.
The
common complaint centred on the fact that an entire suburb would go down, with
no explanation forthcoming from the utility company as to the cause or the
duration of the outage. In most cases the utility’s emergency call centre was
unaware of the problem.
This
is what I’d like to call ‘load shedding lite’ - a new South African phenomenon.
Moreover,
power quality is also an issue for the majority of callers, many reporting
power surges strong enough to blow up valuable equipment and yes, even uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.
Some
of the outages will, no doubt, be due to ageing infrastructure and the need for
routine maintenance. But surely this should be better planned and if outages
are scheduled, the date/time/duration should be communicated to users, especially
if the cuts are repeated day after day?
I
would be interested to know if this is only my perception, or if the problem is
more widespread. Let me know.
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