Take a new look at solar energy, buy a generator or fill your gas cylinders, get a few packs of candles and put paraffin (or new batteries) into those lamps. Eskom’s "load shedding" (planned rotating interruption of national electricity supplies) will be with us for quite some time.

Louis Trichardt was hit by at least two seriously disrupting Eskom electricity blackouts this week – one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Neither of these planned interruptions was communicated beforehand to the local community.

Despite meticulous load-shedding schedules which are now being published on the Internet, unscheduled, unpredicted and unannounced interruptions are causing havoc in communities, where private households, traders and manufacturers were frustrated and disrupted by this week’s series of lengthy, unannounced blackouts.

Published times of scheduled load shedding were not adhered to. According to an Internet communication, no load shedding was planned for Wednesday this week, when a lengthy peak-hour interruption hit Louis Trichardt.

According to reports, load shedding had to be introduced countrywide at short notice by Eskom since Tuesday this week, as a result of, inter alia, the unexpected cold wet weather, which saw the demand for electricity soar way above the maximum production capacity of Eskom. Eskom was also caught on the wrong foot by the unexpected countrywide return of winter weather. They have already started on their annual routine maintenance work at some of their power stations, while unforeseen repair work was also necessitated by faults at various power stations in Mpumalanga.