The UPS connected to my PC flickered on and off a couple of times earlier today, signalling instability on the electrical grid. I just ignored it, because we often have little flickers like that. At 14h40, though, the power did go off entirely. Thank heavens for the UPS. It kept the computer going, or I’d…
We are waiting for our first slot of scheduled load-shedding to begin at 20h00. I just have to heat up our already prepared supper of stirfry and basmati rice, and to fire up the laptop so we can watch another episode of “Sex and the City”. A chocolate pudding is firming up in the fridge, and…
We whinged, complained, griped and whined, when we were told that there would be nationwide power outages for the next three months (at least). And today we whinged, complained, griped and whined, because the load shedding did not start on time! How bizarre is that? For the last couple of weeks, our much-maligned electricity supply commission Eskom has been…
In the middle of the power outage, our sensible Germanic visitors arrived bearing nibblies that required no heating up. They had noticed on their way over that our suburb was plunged in darkness and that the traffic lights weren’t working. Coming from the first world city of Munich and thus not being used to repeated…
Thanks to our revolutionary power-outage-combating combination of battery-charger, deep-cycle battery, inverter and extension leads, I am still able to blog. And to locate Eskom’s latest load-shedding schedules. Go to: Eskom’s own website, where you can type in your suburb and search for the times when you are likely to be shut down an independent website,…
I was so looking forward to attending a “Teaching with Technology” seminar offered to students and staff by the Centre for Education Technology) at UCT. With a title like “Web Searches: Life Beyond Google“, it promised to be both fascinating and instructive. I clearly wasn’t the only one who felt like that, as the teaching…
It seems that our poor beleaguered and derided Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs, Ms Bujelwa Sonjica, was misunderstood. As we Seffricans say: “Agh shame…” She now denies that she sent all of us to bed early (and presumably without milk and cookies, because there was no electricity to do any baking and the milk…
To quote from a rather sheepish Richard: “OK. 15 minutes is not enough. Neither is 16. The specific heat capacity of water is about 4200 J/(kg K), which means a 3kW thermostat will take about 1 hour and 45 minutes to heat up 150 litres from 25 degrees to 55 degrees. I’ve now set the…
This morning – after the (half-)city-wide power failure last night – Richard decided to finish the job of wiring the isolator switch and the geyser timer. (For the Yanks out there – I think you call geysers “hot water cylinders” – geysers seem to be those things that spit fire and brimstone, and I don’t…
Well, it seems that it wasn’t Richard’s fault after all, why the power went out across half of Cape Town! What a relief! I should explain that he was up in the roof last night, trying to install an isolator switch between the geyser (hot water cylinder) and our newly acquired timer unit. (More about…
Newsflash: 21h00 – Our neighbourhood has just been plunged into darkness. At first I thought it was just our house – as Richard had been up in the roof for the last two hours, hooking up a geyser-timer and an isolator switch in the roof. But it seems to be the whole neighbourhood. Mom in…
I was listening to a local talk-radio programme on CapeTalk this morning on my way to work. Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica gave an enlightening speech in Parliament yesterday, during a special joint parliamentary sitting, in which she urged all people in South Africa: “Go to sleep earlier so that you can grow and…
South Africa has a very serious shortage of electricity. In fact, it is so serious at the moment that we have dramatically reduced (halted?) our electricity exports to our neighbouring countries, with whom we have long-term contracts. Family in Namibia, for instance, tell us that they now have fairly regular ‘load shedding’ every day –…
What with all the ‘load shedding’ going on and the ‘lack of capacity’, Eskom is now demanding of all South Africans that we should reduce electricity consumption and investigate alternative sources of energy. Why they don’t seem to be researching these, is a mystery. (I suppose it’s the age-old response of incompetent people – passing…
Grains of Sand 