Sorry you're having power issues. They aren't fun.... and can turn everyday life upside-down.

Are you dealing with a public or private utility?

Just a quick point of context:

Yes, here in California we are having issues with PG&E, a private electric utility. They have single-handed caused many of our largest fires over the years -- which loss of life, homes, and habitat -- but their size -- the largest private utility in the country -- has insulated them politically from the worst consequences of their actions. Now they've decided to simply turn things "off" when they feel potentially threatened.... meanwhile charging higher rates to make up for the massive judgements against them. It's a bad, bad situation... and one that might be "things to come" for the rest of the country as more-and-more problems erupt from lack of infrastructure repair and updating.

Hope it gets fixed.

(Except it's less a furnace and more an incinerator...they sadly have little need for extra heat with all the wildfires you guys/gals get)

d'oh

local restaurant closed
verrr upscale
verrr ser-wanks
mah poor friend :/
but i know she'll bounce back

So the restaurant was owned by a friend? Or they worked there? Either way i'm sorry to hear that......a place me and my mother/other family used to visit(and which she worked at decades ago) recently closed up(about a year or so ago) after being open for nearly 6 decades. :\

Thanks man, we're used to it by now :)

Our national power utility is state owned, which is why it is in such a mess. There have been efforts to make the country's power generation at least partly private, but there's a lot of pushback against it, especially from the unions (because of very high unemployment). It's interesting to note how you mention that they are insulated politically due to their size. I think a lot of people think that going private would solve all our woes, but like you mention, that comes with it's own nonsense. Though I won't go as far as to say that private company accountability and lobbying in general here and there are the same.

Seems there are problems inherent in both private and public utilities. Here in the US public utilities tend to be better regulated and run better, but not always. Anyway...

Whatever the case in your part of the world, hope you are well. Have thought about things there since the recent water shortage.

Take care

Okay now even I'm starting to worry :/ Stage 6 loadshedding, i.e. 6000MW taken off the grid. Seems that it means no power for approximately 1/2 of the day. The app that most everyone in the country is using to tell them when their power will go off only seems to have info up to stage 4, since if memory serves that's as high as it's ever went.

That is nuts.....time to get the pitchforks and torches**, then ;)

(Also what happens to the load? Do they just dump it and the power is wasted? That seems dumb if they do that)

**=For weenie roasts, of course.

Perhaps I phrased it a bit poorly. It's 6000MW that they simply don't have, and can't afford or don't have the diesel for the emergency generators to make up for it. The cause is mostly poorly maintained generators failing. Luckily back to stage 4 as of this morning.

This is why I think we need to get more nations on thorium reactors......hardly any waste, no we*ponization issues, much safer, smaller reactor vessel, etc.

South Africa from what I understand was busy doing ground breaking research on pebble-bed nuclear reactors, which would've allowed for much smaller nuclear power stations. From what I hear it was very promising, that evidence even suggests the chinese broke into one of our facilities to steal the tech. However then if the rumours are to be believed the promising research was killed by the government. Which isn't surprising since not long after this the government came within a hair's breath of committing to a deal with the russians to build russian nuclear reactors in the country, a deal which two finance ministers flat out said the country could not afford. The former of which was fired for his trouble and replaced with a stooge that would've ok'd the deal, but was only the country's finance minister for one weekend before collective outrage forced the president to fire him too. His replacement was the second minister who said the deal was unaffordable and was also later fired and replaced with what suppose to be another stooge.
Luckily for us the presidency responsible for the mess was 'usurped' from within before the deal could've gone through and bankrupt us. Corruption is fun!

So spy games IRL, then?

Also are those designs as safe/compact/etc as thorium or less?

Sorry I don't know enough nuclear to say

Fair enough.....also here's to hoping y'all get that power issue sorted soon. :)

Maybe it's time to build some solor panels? (Yes, there's an environmental cost to their manufacture, but the savings over time should make up for it, and I would expect your country to get plenty of sun during the southern hemisphere summer.)