Loadshedding

We have prepared this brief guide for our guests from outside of South Africa, for whom loadshedding, and the mere concept of loadshedding might well be an unknown mystery.

South Africa has experienced a shortage of capacity in our electricity supply now for many years. Electricity in this country is supplied by ESKOM, which is the State-owned utility, tasked with the generation, supply and distribution of electricity to the whole of South Africa, as well as certain neighbouring States.

As ESKOM does not have the capacity to fulfil this obligation, it has resorted to a system known as loadshedding, in terms of which, the electricity supply to various parts of the country is switched off on a rotational basis, for varying time periods. In the most simplistic way of explaining it, there are (currently) 8 Stages of loadshedding, ranging from Stage 1, which is low-level interruption of electricity supply, to Stage 8 which involves an ongoing round-the-clock rotation of 4 hours on, 4 hours off. In terms of the 3 dk villas units in Hout Bay, we are located in the following Zone:

As the status of loadshedding is updated on a daily, and sometimes even more frequent basis, one has to keep track of this to anticipate when the interruptions will take place. The easiest way to achieve this is to download the Eskom Se Push App, which keeps you automatically updated of what the current status is.

As you are our guest here, we want you to enjoy your stay, and to be as minimally inconvenienced by loadshedding as possible. To this end, we have installed a compact battery back-up system, which allows you to have plugs on, lights on, television and Wi-Fi even during loadshedding. Please note that appliances such as stove, microwave, washing machine, kettle, iron are NOT powered by this system.