By the day power cuts or which are commonly referred to as load shedding in South Africa are becoming a norm. Load shedding is planned electricity interruption when the demand for electricity exceeds the supply. The duration of load shedding varies from two hours to six which are called stages.
Therefore, this is becoming or rather has become a norm, for me, it is now surprising if there isn't load shedding planned for the day. Having to deal with the disruption it is causing to businesses, life, and even commuting amongst other effects there's another impact to worry about which is vandalism.
What is now happening is during load shedding some take advantage of the situation to vandalize substations for cable theft which are then sold as scrap metals. For some here's an opportunity and they are taking advantage of it.
Last week during load shedding which was scheduled for 22:00-00:00, the substation supply in the town I reside was vandalized, it took a little over 48 hours for it to be fixed as even the Mayor was affected. For me, my plans on Hive were completely disrupted, I had to go seat at the coffee shop, and buy coffee after coffee to use the electricity to get my work done incurring unplanned expenses.
The vandalizers, I wish I have an appropriate name for them, shouldn't they let us be for a while, say maybe six months? No! They came for us again this week, on Monday and this time a bigger substation which affected the town on a larger scale, again it took just over 48 hours to have electricity restored.
You get to question, why isn't there security at these substations? I don't have the answer as I find it baffling as well.
The Scrap Metal Yards
These cable theft eventually finds themselves in scrap yards where they are sold for money. I am unaware of the regulations for the scarp yards but I expect some tight regulations is lacking in that aspect.
In every other town in the locations, you are bound to find scrap yards.
The curb substaion vandalism, not only should the focus be placed on the security of substations but the scrap yards do need serious attention as cable theft and even car parts all land up there.
This is a similar situation with Cell Towers where I worked on some vandalized sites last year, in the case of Cell Towers they were after the batteries, and some cases were very scary when we arrive on site, these guys are heavily armed, and from what we could tell they are not amateurs, they are guys that know where to cut off the alarm system, camera and disarm the pepper spray. This same can be said in the case of the load shedding, they aren't guys without electricity know-how.
So while we are plunged into planned darkness, an opportunity opens up for some pushing us into further darkness.
We owe it to ourselves to make Hive great
Image by @doze