Back to reality, thanks to Eskom

It’s not winter, so electricity demand is down. It’s not raining, so the coal’s not wet. On Monday night, according to Eskom’s own tweet, the power supply was “stable” and we were thanked for our responsible usage.

Somehow, though, power generation units failed at five power plants. And the Koeberg nuclear power station, which tripped on Saturday during “routine testing” of the control rods, is still not back online.

Eskom seems to know that we are slipping back into complacency – after all, it has been some weeks that we have been free of load shedding – and reminds us of the real situation. And, at the risk of irritating people, we would suggest that is not such a bad thing.

ALSO READ: Load shedding is back! Stage 2 expected until Saturday night

Why mislead people with the illusion of 24/7/365 power supply when that is probably never going to happen in our lifetime?

We may as well just get used to losing two hours a day and rearranging our lives – and businesses – around that. Let’s just resign ourselves to being a Third World basket case.

So, thanks Eskom, for bringing us back to reality. At least there is a silver lining to this cloud: South Africa is more than doing its bit to reduce global CO2 emissions.