PaulGherkin
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2020
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I grew up in Jozi... The power cut business was a regular deal, in fact I bought my first UPS in 2006.
Why?
Because Shitty Power are that fcked up.
Much of Roodepoot was already crumbing then, and then when I bought my first house in Little Falls we got to learn all about the "rotational loadshedding", especially the day I found out about it when my newborn child was suffering, me unable to warm his bottle because the bastards came to the substation to cut the power. I confronted them at the substation and that's where it was revealed to me that they were doing the loadshedding to avoid what I would later learn was "avoidance of exceeding maximum notified demand"
Living in that area was kak.. the power was less stable than a broken park bench. When the power came back they usually restored it with a bang, often appliances would be blown up, they even succeeded in popping the geyser element once.
Then I moved to other parts of Roodepoort... ag nee wat... same old kak... In 2013 I had no power for four days because the cable underground burnt out.. needless to say I did get power eventually. I bribed the City Power officials to connect my house to one of the other remaining phases so I could at least save whatever was left in the freezer that didn't rot.
In 2017 I moved to Cape Town... pure bliss... no power cut, until I moved into Table View in 2018 and discovered, the joke was on me as I was then a Direct Eskom Customer... and got the bone, without lube that made the "rotational loadshedding" "load reduction" or whatever it's called, look like a picnic.
I emigrated in 2022... I had to come back over the festive season to attend to my elderly parents and to get some unabridged certificates from Home Affairs needed to finalize my naturalization in NL. And yes that's how I got to experience loadshedding, worse than in Jozi, worse than in Zimbabwe when I lived and worked there, and pretty much, how shall I say, the same as when I was working in Blantyre...
The power, on for such short periods of time you can't even charge a battery properly..
