On Friday, June 26, 2020 at 3:08:38 AM UTC+2, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:   
   >    
   > I was on a Zoom chat with a bunch of fellow DBAs and one was from South    
   > Africa and she was talking about an upcoming power outage because of the    
   > factors you mention.   
      
   ESKOM has warned us all that 'Load-Shedding' (their euphamism for rolling   
   blackouts / brownouts) is eminent this winter (we're in the Southern   
   hemisphere), if all of us don't converse electricity. This is while, for the   
   first time in history, the largest    
   urban center of non-payment for electricity is actually under going ten hours   
   a day blackouts due to maintenance and breakdowns. It is also occurring   
   with-in weeks of two major metros announcing that if there is Load-shedding   
   this winter they have made    
   provision by installing hundreds of megawatts worth of diesel generators, that   
   can running for days on end, and have secured enough diesel to run said   
   generators at full capacity until summer.    
      
   Translation: those Metros are no longer prepared to have their citizens and   
   the businesses that pay taxes to the Metro blackmailed. If ESKOM does   
   something stupid the Metros are ready to go it alone under the single   
   provision that the law makes for    
   breaking the monopoly on power generation and distribution. Unfortunately I do   
   not live within either of those Metros zones of control.   
      
   On the other side of things almost everyone who can afford it (I can't) has   
   bought inverters, batteries, solar panels and / or generators. The generators   
   suck because of the noise (I had a neighbor who had 3, including a 25kwe   
   diesel. He wrapped them up    
   in noise-absorbing boxes and filtered the exhaust fumes but it still felt and   
   smelt like I was at ground zero of a post-apocalyptic dragster race). But   
   those South Africans who can afford (who are hardly a majority) are making it   
   clear that they don't    
   intend to be under ESKOM's thumb this winter.    
      
   Another rush set of purchases has been gas (LPG in cylinders, almost nowhere   
   in SA has piped gas) appliances. Gas cookers, stoves, space heaters, bath and   
   shower water heater, fridges, and even LPG fueled generators are flying off   
   the shelves so fast no    
   one can keep their stock levels up. Unfortunately that party has a definite   
   expiry date built in. SA single source of LPG is estimated to become   
   non-profitable by 2023, which unless a pipeline from Mozambique finally gets   
   finished will leave us without    
   an affordable supply of LPG. We'll be back to buying it in tanker ships from   
   the Middle East and the Americas. And the Green lobby, and some other people,   
   are not too keen on the idea of having ships holding mega-liters of easily   
   evaporating fuel parked    
   off their pristine coastline. Given the safety record of some parts of the   
   South African coast I'm not too happy about it either.   
      
      
       
   > --    
   > Greg D. Moore                   http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/   
   > CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net   
   > IT Disaster Response -    
   > https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Response-Lessons-Learned-Field/dp/1484221834/   
      
      
      
   Anyway,   
      
   Take care.   
   Regards   
   Frank   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)