Electricity Stats

I know I’m a slave to statistics but I can’t help it. I just find it interesting…

Since 1^st Jan this year in my house in Gilgel (not counting the days I was away) the average time the power has been off is 4h40m per day which is around 19.5% or looking at it another way, the electricity is only on 80.5% of the time.

Of all the days during this period, there was either continuous power, or only very short cuts on 48% of the days. This means on 52% of the days there was a power cut of at least 30 minutes.

Sometimes the power cuts are due to “rationing” the limited generating capacity of the country (which is all hydro), sometimes due to technical problems and other times due to power poles being blown down in the wind, or in one case because someone cut a tree down onto the power lines!

And we complain in the UK if it goes off for 5 seconds!!!!

This does link into my case for development here. In the UK, we sorted out the power system over decades, then, only after it was stable did computers and other technology which rely on a steady power supply come along. Here they have all these computers donated by US-AID etc and are trying to use them on this unstable platform. Another example of trying to run before you can walk (or looking at it another way: foreigners not really thinking about what they are giving. I guess they get tax-breaks on computer systems, but not if they help build more hydro-electric plants and give training to people putting up power poles and operating the system.)