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Once the highly infrastructure developed economic powerhouse of Africa, South Africans these days are more interested in the outlook for rolling blackouts. The country’s most-downloaded app provides schedules, alerts and forecasts for power outages.
Eskom, the state power monopoly, is struggling to generate enough electricity to meet needs, and has re-introduced a byzantine system of rotating outages known as “load-shedding.” On February 11th a whopping 4,000 megawatts of power, enough to power some 3m households, was cut from the national grid to prevent it from collapsing. Some businesses have bought generators and battery systems; others close during outages. In big cities, there is chaos at rush hour as traffic lights go dark. The blackouts suit copper-cable thieves, who can steal without fear of electrocution. And when the electricity is switched backed on, substations sometimes explode, resulting in secondary outages.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2019/02/21/why-the-lights-keep-going-out-in-south-africa
[paywall: you can see the whole article in 'anonymous view' through startpage.com]
More on the situation:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/267263-south-africas-electricity-system-is-falling-apart-and-it-is-much-bigger-than-just-eskom.html
How to bring back the lights in South Africa?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @11:45PM (3 children)
They could formalize the informal reaction already described in the summary--by promoting the use of devices that incorporate batteries for when the grid fails. It can work well for low powered applications: LED lighting, phones, tablets, laptops, radios all work well this way.
For high power applications like washing machines, they could use a kind of smart meter that only allows increased load during certain times.
If they had the money to do all that though, they'd probably have the money to fix the grid. "It's the economy, stupid" has become a cliche for a reason.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by datapharmer on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
Yep, and for a few cents extra you could have a backup watch battery with 1k of ram to store the wash cycle settings to pick up where it left off when the power failed. Yet my high tech Samsung fridge resets the temp every time the power flickers, which is extra absurd since it stores the child safety lock setting...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:25AM
> Samsung fridge resets the temp every time the power flickers
Good to know, this is something that could be tested at the store. Get them to plug it in, set temp, unplug, replug, check to see if the computer readout held the setting. Now that I know to check for it, I'd never buy a fridge that didn't pass this test. I wonder if Consumer Union (Consumer Reports Magazine) or the equivalent operation in other countries include this in their testing?
Our Kenmore (Amana) is 11 years old now and we've been through a number of power failures of up to about a half a day. Within the first week we had it we settled on freezer at "4" and fridge at "5" on the digital thermostat and haven't touched those buttons since.
One tip we got from the repair guy who tried to fix the previous fridge--all the computerized/electronic-thermostat fridges can be damaged by a power line surge. The Kenmore went on a surge protector from day one. A few years later, we had the electric service re-done (it was ~50 years old) and added whole-house surge protectors on the new panel as well.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Tokolosh on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:57AM
Smart, pre-pay meters are used extensively. However, many of the poors get their electricity from the local municipality. They do not pay their bills, which means the municipalities don't pay Eskom in turn. And everyone is to scared to cut off the defaulters. Only the rich, most white people, and big business and industry pay their bills.