Isn’t that because the stage suddenly changed? You can manually look at the tables and always prepare for 1 or 2 stages worse than predicted.
Yes. Normally the schedule is followed and is changed a day or so in advance.
What we are experiencing appears to be is crisis management (by CoCT??) of changing the stage to cope with some emergency.
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Yes, that is the state of Eskom…
I understood the terms of the cash-for-power thing that only once the total municipal bill (not only the energy component) is zero, that you will then get to the point of qualifying for actual payment (and then only once the amount exceeds R1000)? His amounts definitely do not cover the entire bill. But yeah, maybe he is in some beta group.
Maybe he has/will have a container or two of grid-tied inverters to sell…
I think many hours will still be spent in front of excel sheets but I suspect most residential systems will, at most, allow one to possibly reduce energy expenses a bit (or some people will sit in the dark/cold while exporting to “beat the system”… “family, Johnny wants a motorbike for his birthday, so I will be instituting stage 6 load shedding in the evenings” 
)
This is there to prevent blowing fuses or tripping breakers in systems with large loads or lots of generation capacity. Also because the British G100 grid code needs it. The hardest part wasn’t doing it for single phase. That part is easy. The hard part is doing it for three phase, while also trying to stick to the grid setpoint, while also trying to avoid passing power through the DC bus (which is inefficient), working the equipment on all three phases equally (as much as you can), and also obeying the BMS limits, then doing all of this while keeping the battery charged and still using all available PV to power the loads.
There was some unhappiness in Jhb a while back. The reality is that Eskom and the municipalities have no way to directly update whatever database ESP relies on, nor any obligation to do so. They are not blind to it, but it’s not their job nor their number one priority. They also cannot control ESP and do not want to be held responsible for what a 3rd party app advises.
As long as LS schedules are in the public domain and are static, ESP can work. When things change (and there were substantial changes in Jhb) then things can get out of whack. This would include any sort of system where a City dynamically manages it’s load shedding stage, or where Eskom change stages at short notice.
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I know it is BT, but still, he said it:
That is after his department stalled so many projects …
His comment also reminds me of:
Ja nee ok …
And thank goodness … (sic)
Some pictures here:
BTech doing their thing… just photo’s from “the report” (bordering on some plagarism I think…)
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So what … at least one can see some photos ASSUMING they are legit photos, that is.
Irrespective kinda, at least we see the insides of a station. 
Got to admit “photos have emerged” sounds a lot more exciting…
I’m just so over bad journalism. Makes me think of some research that has been going on about the levels of particulate matter (rubber being shed from your wheels) of traditional vehicles vs EVs. So the report found that this is higher in heavier vehicles, such as EVs. No sh*t Sherlock.
In UK parliament, the then minister of environment reported that the higher pollution from other things, like the tyres, may mean that there is less progress than was hoped for, but that the exact situation is somewhat unknown at the moment.
The “Sun” then reported that EV drivers have been warned about the ways their cars are more polluting than traditional cars, while The Daily Mail called it “the dirty little secret of electric cars”.
Granted, those particular news papers are not particularly high up in the pickings, but it illustrates the situation so clearly.
This energy issue is not only here in SA, but the USA also …
Eskom/USA, I do not know where the money is going to come from …
Diesel going up in smoke fast … 24 OCGT’s @ 6-8 litres per second (518k litres per hour @ 6l/s OR R10mill /h)
But we don’t have LS!!! 
… for now.
This must surely play out everywhere. In the UK they want people to use heatpumps. These use less energy but they increase the amount of electricity a house uses.
They want you to drive an EV, but that needs charging.
They need way more electricity. But it has to be the right type of electricity IE not generated by burning fossil fuel.
That means substantial changes to the grid. The best areas for wind power are all off shore and mostly up north. The grid was never built to move electricity from the North Sea to the midlands.
Grid operator estimates 1000km of overland cable and 6000km of undersea cable. Which will cost money. And the 1000km of new overland cable is not a done deal, or will require various types of persuasion of people who are upset about having to look at ugly pylons, health impact, threats to the breeding cycle of the crested Newt etc.
Look on the bright side! (At least they are doing something as opposed to you know who)
This pic impressed me: wind turbines as far as the eye can see
Every country in the world has this issue. As I frequently remind people, the entire exercise is about getting away from fossil fuels. That is the primary goal, almost everything else is just a knock-on effect.
That means every country in the world is in the same boat, they have to build new capacity, new capacity of the right kind.
South Africa is in the enviable position that a lot of the old stuff is basically finished already. While the Americans have to transition away from perfectly well working stuff – and 15% of them think there is no reason to – South Africa doesn’t have that legacy issue. Or at least to a much smaller extent. I’m trying to be funny here… load shedding has an unexpected upside!
This is also why every anti-EV guy who tells you “they are 80% powered by coal!” misses the point. Yeah… we know… that has to change.
A lot of the changes we see, such as moving to heat pumps, is done precisely because a more efficient downstream means less upstream needs to be built.
That is also why the Hydrogen crowd will likely lose round 1. It is less efficient, so it would require more upstream capacity to be built.
Back to the UK though: I am told they still have some surplus left after switching to LED lighting.