As weary South Africans dealing with daily loses of electricity on a rotational basis, it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of the constant disruption to our lives. We’ve also written before about the effect on our children’s lives too. There is someone, however, who has taken on the task to provide a service for us, not only in giving us schedules but also providing information and power alternatives.
About Joel Bijlmer
Joel Bijlmer is the founder of Loadshedding.com.
He is actually from the Netherlands, but he has a South African girlfriend from Hermanus. So now they live in Joburg and he works his various businesses from there.
Joel also has a very cool business that I know you ladies would be interested in – it’s called Aftersocks. After you’ve been partying away in high heels, you can put on your Aftersocks (which have a supportive, rubbery sole) and walk home like that, instead of suffering in the heels! He’s also been giving some away to those that don’t even have shoes, and I think it’s in this spirit of giving back that he’s helping us with Loadshedding.
About Loadshedding.com
Like most foreigners visiting our shores, Joel was surprised to experience loadshedding. He also found it very inconvenient and when the opportunity to get the domain name “loadshedding.com” came up, he grabbed it.
Loadshedding schedules
On this site you can fill in your suburb and find your loadshedding schedule. On SA Mom Blogs you’ll also see a widget on the side bar (which you can also put on your blog) and fill in your suburb from there. Joel also explains more about this in the interview.
Updated electricity information
Joel has a blog on the site where he’s constantly delivering the latest information on what’s happening on our grid. I also liked some of his very useful articles like how loadshedding can be a time for family activities and he gives some examples.
Power alternatives
There’s a lot of options here and they are also developing their own products. Joel shared with us how they are developing their own inverter and have some renting options for the solar panels in the interview.
It’s best to be prepared
One takeaway from this interview was: things are not good and when they really do get bad, you are not going to be able to get hold of an inverter, so it’s best to stock up now. Rather do what you can now to insulate yourself and not rely on a grid that keeps shutting off at regular intervals.
Here is my interview with Joel:
You can find out more information on Loadshedding.com
This post was conducted during a loadshedding outage, powered by my inverter. I think I’ll power up the gas stove and have some soup now!
What are you doing to deal with loadshedding?
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