Last night we had a power cut for roughly 6 hours which turned out to be a fault and not load shedding or the new terminology being used load reduction. Who knows if it was a genuine fault or not because it was the entire south of Johannesburg that was cut off. This image above was the first time I even knew we were doing load reduction again and our suburb is not even on it so I guess we could be next week.
My friend who is helping me purchase the solar kit is back tomorrow after being away for 2 weeks so I will have to catch up with him over the weekend as Friday apparently is a public holiday. Not having experienced a power cut for a good 4 or 5 months yesterday was a good wake up call highlighting this is a must have purchase that needs to happen now.
Having experienced power cuts for what seemed like daily for over a year which had you living by a timetable of when you could take a shower or make some coffee was not fun times and a solar system will give us some normality back.
Last night when I had to nip out and purchase fuel for the generator what hit home was how few people have got any back up power. My neighbor is fully off the grid and kind of resembles a light house with darkness all around. When you drive past houses you may see one room lit up or some outside lights on, but noting that would resemble off the grid living.
The area I live in would be considered middle to upper class which is kind of surprising how few homes are lit up. One would have assumed that you would expect to see every other house fully lit up but that is so far from what the reality is.
The economy has definitely taking it's toll on the middle class as they have no extra money to fund a solar system and if they have done it they are only small systems offering a few basics. The system I am buying will take my entire house off the grid with power to spare and probably enough to light up and power another house.
I suppose t all comes down to affordability and what you see as important and no doubt most families are already over stretched in debt so any new purchases would be out of the question. They all have multiple cars and I am sure are paying for excessive fees subscribing to satellite television living beyond their means.
The plan now is to be off the grid within the next 2 weeks and I can then forget about having to look at timetables to see whether I can make a cup of coffee or not. The really good part about this is whatever the entire system costs it will be recouped when we sell the house.