# Interest group forums > Electrical Contracting Industry Forum > Electrical Load Shedding Forum >  My first load shedding this year

## duncan drennan

Whoohoo! I'm currently having my first load shedding. Now I too feel like I am a part of the currently-power-disadvantaged group  :Wink:

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## IanF

Duncan 
Welcome to the club. The first one is fun after that your sense of humour also gets shedded. Wasn't Eskom going to finish the "unplanned" maintenance today.

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## Faan

I do not understand this as we have been having it almost every day from 14:00 for at least 2 hrs. Today it was from about 11:30 until 14:15  A friend of mine who lives just 2kms away has never had it.  How does the load shedding work?

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## duncan drennan

There is a schedule of areas, which is classified into three classes, Brown 1, Brown 2, Brown 3. Once they hit peak demand they first go Brown 1, then 2, then 3. From Eskom's load shedding page,




> If load shedding is required, the Stage indicates the extent to which load shedding will occur. The stage is set daily and will change only under exceptional circumstances.
> 
> There are 3 Stages and the number of outages will increase with each stage.


I think they look at a couple of factors when choosing how to shed the load, with factors including, essential services in the area (hospitals, etc.), how much load they will recover, who is affected, and such likes.

If you look at the schedules pages, there is this note,




> Should the shortfall between demand and supply be within a range of 1500 MW, Stage 1 of the manual load shedding process is triggered.
> 
> Stage 2 of the manual load shedding process caters for a capacity shortfall of up to 3000MW
> 
> Stage 3 caters for a capacity shortfall of up to 4500MW.


You can find more info about load shedding on Eskom's website.

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## Chatmaster

I heard over the radio that Koeberg was shut down for maintenance today, maybe that is the reason.

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## Vincent

Welcome to the load-shedding club. Over the past three weeks, our area (grid) has had power cut off three days per week up to 4 hours per day. It usually happens between 8am -2pm in a residential area.

Soon we're going to have ministers telling us the reason for power cuts is because our economy is growing too fast.  (or maybe they have said it). I think eishkom and the government are weaning the gullible and complacent public for longer and longer power cuts, until load-shedding becomes an everyday occurrence  including Saturdays & Sundays.

Power cuts, interest rate hikes, oil prices on the increase, shortage of milk, bread prices increasing, and a host of other factors may soon push this country into a deep recession, which may last longer than a year.

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## Dave A

Welcome to the club, Duncan. Although as I recall at the time of the "bolt in the machine" you folk got whacked when the rest of the country was doing kinda OK.

Maybe Cape Town has been less affected than other parts of the country up to now due to the carrying capacity of the link between the Western Cape and the rest of the country. I'm afraid whilst Koeberg is on planned maintenance that weak link that saved you up until now is about to bite back.



> I think they look at a couple of factors when choosing how to shed the load, with factors including... who is affected,


Funny you should mention that. I've had three people in the last two days that reckon they've had minimal or no load shedding as a result of just who their neighbours on the same supply sub are. Hard to prove (or disprove) though.



> Power cuts, interest rate hikes, oil prices on the increase, shortage of milk, bread prices increasing, and a host of other factors may soon push this country into a deep recession, which may last longer than a year.


I'm afraid so.  :Frown:

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## duncan drennan

> Maybe Cape Town has been less affected than other parts of the country up to now due to the carrying capacity of the link between the Western Cape and the rest of the country.


Don't get me wrong, there has been plenty of load shedding here, just not in out neighbourhood ('til today). Just around the corner they have been shed most days over the past week.




> Funny you should mention that. I've had three people in the last two days that reckon they've had minimal or no load shedding as a result of just who their neighbours on the same supply sub are. Hard to prove (or disprove) though.


Not quite what I was thinking....I was thinking more in terms of their larger customers (revenue), not so much in terms of whose back was being scratched  :Whistling:

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## Dave A

> Don't get me wrong,


But that's so much more fun  :Stick Out Tongue:

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## duncan drennan

hehehehe, :lol:

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## Chatmaster

I am so frustrated. Our power was out from 14:15 till 20:15. This seriously hurting my business. Getting my backup electricity sorted out is going to be a bit more than my budget if they take us down for 6 hours at a time!

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## duncan drennan

But I thought you had your gennie, and UPS now?

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## duncan drennan

I finally understand exactly how they decide who to switch off!

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## Chatmaster

> But I thought you had your gennie, and UPS now?


Yep, I do, but I have people working in Pretoria, Cape Town and Knysna. I do not have the budget to buy gennies for them right now. :Rant1:  Forgot, the bigger gennie is still not hooked up. I am waiting for my UPS and cannot risk loosing my computers with just hooking up the gennie. Even though they say it has a voltage regulator, I will rather wait for the UPS.

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## murdock

that job interview in the USA is starting to looking more promising...maybe i should take it while i still can...before everyone else needs to leave...let me rather climb on the band wagon and rip the *ss out of everyone while there is still money...i have been watching the prices how they are escalating as the demand is getting bigger than the supply of anything from generators to batteries to invertors...changeover switches you name it... you name your price...

i have heard of people paying 3 times the normal price...and this will only increase as the demad gets bigger...i went today to get a price on a battery while i was at the counter the price went up by 100 rand and now with the so called new shipment arriving the price is set to escalate.

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## Dave W

Can someone please shed some light on a bit of confusion some collegues and I are having in the office?

Where did all the power go...............three months ago there was no such thing as load shedding, or is that just something I missed. 
How then can Eishkom and our "I'm sorry" or "No comment" Govt, say that it has to do with the economic growth. The ecomomy has actually slowed in the last few months, so where to now, and then also to say that this will go on for the length of time they claim, who is to fit this bill for those incompetants........the good old you know who.

Makes one think

Rgds Dave W

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## Chatmaster

My opinion based on all the trash I have listened to over the past few weeks. They have been lying to us from day one with almost every single reason that they gave to support the current problem. 

First of all, this has nothing to do with unexpected growth that they couldn't foresee. Our economic growth has been under the expected 6% for the past 4-5 years, so that was a lie.

The other reasons of unexpected increase of electricity use is also bs, because the peak use occurs during winter time.

I think the only 3 reasons I can see from this is the following.
*Gross incompetence.*
They continued to run all the power sources without proper maintenance, which means when the bubble burst late last year, they realised, oops, maybe we better run maintenance on all our stations to ensure this doesn't happen at a later stage.

*Gross incompetence*
Due to lack of expertise they suddenly awake on morning realising that the new junior engineer that the appointed was right, and they needed to actually get of their fat wallets and actually do some work for their bonuses, else the entire country will blackout.

The last one
They need to get Mbeki out of office and this is the best way for them to ensure that it happens, they did tell government this was going to happen, yet they didn't get the money to do so from them, so no one will even suspect that they are part of the ANC leadership struggle....... Howzit for a conspiracy theory?  :Whistling:

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## murdock

well there are people in this country who still think the white people took their big houses and fridges and stoves etc when we got here years ago so what do you expect...the goverment must think we will believe anything they throw at us... problem is there is NOTHING you and i can do about it...you just have to sit and wait until the workers start getting retrenched and the mines and big companies start closing down and the workers are effected...that why if you want things to start happening...put your staff on short time every time there is a power failure and watch how quick cosatu steps in they will decide enough is enough and then heads will roll and there will be mass action and the goverment will have make things happen.

as i mentioned before the old goverment did such a good job with the design of the electrical grid that they did away with the old ripple relay and all that has happened is the new goverment have just been running to failure.

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## seymour7

> I do not understand this as we have been having it almost every day from 14:00 for at least 2 hrs. Today it was from about 11:30 until 14:15  A friend of mine who lives just 2kms away has never had it.  How does the load shedding work?


Yeah, I know my gran doesn't get load shedding as she is on the same block as a hospital.

/me is really jealous of his gran :/

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