Eskom Power Outages
Eskom power outages & their regular implementation of load shedding is not only causing massive harm to the SA economy, but also effecting the daily lives of people living in South Africa.
Due to the impact of Eskom power outages normal people & businesses are turning to alternative power solutions in the form of generators, solar energy & inverters to try & minimise the inconvenience it is causing.
Unfortunately traffic lights, commonly known as robots, are directly affected by outages which in turn cause nightmarish traffic jams, inconvenience & contribute to reducing productivity of businessmen, employees & businesses.
Load Shedding Eskom
Some consolation to business & commerce & SA citizens is having the Eskom load shedding schedule handy which allows a certain amount of planning & preparation to be effected for those times when you know you will be without power.
Below are some links to help you find the load shedding schedule applicable to your area;
City Power Load Shedding Schedule- City Of Cape Town Load Shedding Schedule
- Ethekwini Load Shedding Schedule
- Tshwane Load Shedding Schedule
- Ekurhuleni Load Shedding Schedule
- Eskom Load Shedding Info
Unfortunately it looks as though load shedding will be a part of South Africans lives for the foreseeable future.
In fact energy experts believe that energy supply will become even worse as winter looms with some predicting that load shedding could last for up to 12 hours at a time if Eskom continues to lose generating capacity.
Bearing in mind that Eskom needs a minimum 3000Mw buffer which, if maintained, would be sufficient in order to bring load shedding to an end.
However, according to Chris Yelland, this is the kind of capacity that Medupi is expected to produce when it is up & running properly and to increase capacity more power stations would have to be built which are not only very costly but also take years to complete.
According to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Energy, the power requirements of the United States could be taken care of with just 160 million Tesla Energy Powerpacks
The sooner Eskom starts looking at grid-connected renewable energy which allows households to power their homes with solar energy, for example, and feed back into the grid any excess energy produced.
Elon Musk’s Tesla Energy Powerwall home batteries could also be used to power your homes, electric cars & feed the grid with excess power.
Solutions there are many, let’s hope the powers (excuse the pun) that be get to grips with this issue speedily & get our power supply up to full capacity as soon as possible.