Cape Town Power Outage: Blackouts Continue

Power cuts have hit Cape Town again – after an interruption-free Monday – and are set to continue throughout the week, precipitating yet more uncertainty among visitors, residents and the businesses who cater to them.

It seems yesterday’s smooth sailing was a red herring for our hopes, and that a brave new era of beat-the-blackout has dawned in Cape Town. The glitches depriving us of electricity are many, but all lead back to two fundamental problems: Eskom hasn’t properly planned for the pace of growth in the Western Cape; and Koeberg, SA’s only nuclear power plant, from which much of the Western Cape gets its power, is undergoing maintenance at precisely the same time that our needs are starting to outstrip the grid’s overall capacity.

So Your Correspondent is once more hopping around to different internet cafes, ensuring that you, dear reader, will be able to get your SA Blog fix. Meanwhile – I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP! – South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission, which is running tomorrow’s municipal elections, has laid in a store of candles for voting stations in the Western Cape.

• Follow the election and electricity stories, which have converged: Cape Argus | News24 | Google News
• Audio streaming: Cape Talk