Talk:Rolling blackout

India POV
The India section seems to require some input from the other side of the issue. It discusses "short sighted government policies", but does not contain either a rebuttal from the "short sighted" government officials nor one of these politicians accepting blame for the problem. The same and other issues (such as weasel words) are shown in lines such as "once considered to be" (by whom?), "no power projects in the pipeline" (how is "power projects" and "pipeline" defined? A better line may be: "No additional power capacity is expected to be added for the next x years.")

"Maharashtra, once considered to be the most progressive state in India is undergoing a very severe energy crisis since 2004 as a result of short sighted government policies, which have not provided for an increase in the electricity demand by domestic and industrial consumers alike. Rural areas experience a minimum of 14 hours rolling blackouts every day. Urban areas, except Mumbai, witness 6 to 8 hours rolling blackouts every day. Even as the state reels under this power crisis, there are no power projects in the pipeline. Industries face a rolling blackout for an unprecedented 48 hours at a stretch." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Acewolf359 (talk • contribs) 18:08, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Power
I suggest the graph be removed. The graph legend is labeled power but volts are shown (P = i x v). Voltage changes in different countries. Defining a time scale doesn't make sense. Simply stating voltage goes to zero is sufficient.

Rolling blackouts india pakistan
Please change the refrence to rolling blackouts in India and Pakistan.

Its true this used to occur about 3 years ago but today, major cities experience no or very little blackouts while the villages experience blackouts but do get electricity for alot more than an hour a day.

Blackouts in Ireland
I am quite confused with regards to the second paragraph about Ireland. Where did this occur? I have never experienced such blackouts in Limerick in the past decade - there has been the occasional very short blackout (i.e. less than 5 minutes), and there was a planned outage once last year for maintenance one afternoon a year or two ago, but that's about it. I have certainly never been aware of any blackouts on a national scale in recent years, though there is a recent advertising campaign trying to get people to cut down on electrical usage in evenings. --Zilog Jones 21:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Blackouts in China
I noticed a fair quantity of writing regarding blackouts in China and reckon it that it lacked any factural accuracy. Having lived in several different cities in China, planned blackouts are not rare, but far less common than suggested here, also as far as I know nobody in China receives free electricity. Lacking written statistics I am not able to put forward more accurate figures to replace them however talking to my friends who actually lived in Beijing the picture is a lot less bleak than it reads. Laforet 05:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

May 26, 2005 blackout in Moscow
As defined in the introductory paragraph, a rolling blackout is an intentionally-engineered electric power outage. The blackout in Moscow on May 25/26, 2005 was apparently caused by an unanticipated equipment failure and thus does not fall in this category of blackouts. The following text has therefore been removed from this article:


 * Russia


 * On May 26, 2005[citation needed]large parts of Moscow and some of its suburbs, including Moscow underground, were blacked out for the whole day owing to a fire on a substation.

This blackout is documented at list of power outages. It would be appropriate to add the reason for the blackout to that list's entry, especially if someone can find a citation.

Piperh 21:36, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Blackouts in India
"Other developing countries, particularly Asian countries like Bangladesh, China, India and Pakistan have daily blackouts of up to 8 hours even in the capital and major cities. Rural areas receive power for as little as an hour a day." I am from India myself and this seems to be somewhat inaccurate. It might happen occasionally, if there is a serious shortage, but power cuts of those lenghts are rarely seen in urban areas. Most villages(with electricity) I know get a lot more power than just 1 hour per day. I agree with the person who posted on the top of this page.--DIGIwarez 14:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Blackouts in California
I removed the reference to California in the sentence claiming that blackouts are frequent and lengthy in certain developed countries (as noted above) because it was patently false. Blackouts, planned or unplanned, are extremely uncommon in California. Rolling blackouts were threatened and then implemented on a handful of days in 2000 and 2001, due to government mismanagement of electrical power industry deregulation which led to power supply manipulation, and have not recurred since. --71.104.17.242 08:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Blackouts in South Africa
I have lived in South Africa all my life and I think it's quite unfair to say that rolling blackouts are "a staple of everyday life" here. We had some power problems a while ago, but on the whole the power is quite stable. Now, Zimbabwe on the other hand ... I am changing this reference. SKA-ed for Life 20:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe not a staple of everyday life, but it seems that Eskom tries to punish us whenever we use too much power. Blatent incompetency, loose bolts, wikipedia articles, you name it. T.Neo (talk contribs review me ) 10:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Some comments on the current content
Due to the South African government denying funding to Eskom – South Africa's national electricity producer – for expansion, the capacity of the nation's electricity grid has not kept up with demand.

It is not a clear fact that demand outstrips supply, nor is is a clear fact that Eskom's troubles are to blame on refusal of the government to pump money into the company.

''In 1998, the Department of Minerals and Energy released a detailed energy review. It explicitly warned that unless "timely steps were taken to ensure that demand does not exceed available supply capacity", generating capacity would reach its limit by 2007.[1]''

The entire reference "1" is a newspaper article in which Helen Zille makes various claims about how the ANC is to blame for the energy crisis. Zille is the leader of the opposition. Surely much of this newspaper article is nothing more than mudslinging. We need more reliable sources.

Instead of ensuring the development of the required infrastructure, the government had instructed Eskom to stop building power stations in the vain hope that the deregulation of power generation would encourage private investors to build the stations.[1]

These are the direct words of Helen Zille in the above article. -- leuce (talk) 21:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

California Infrastructure
The article states that California electricity system is split into several grids, and these are arranged so that if a grid is disconnected then it will not effect a large area in order to prevent looting unrest etc. I was just wondering how large these areas of effect are, are we talking 1000,s of houses, a few streets, half the houses on a street? I was wondering because it seems to me that unless the areas are quite large, then implementing separate grids within an area would be prohibitively expensive and the money could have been much better spent on extra generating capacity or energy saving schemes.--Pypex (talk) 13:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Load shedding
It is also implemented by customers:

''Load shedding, normally used in industrial, large commercial, and utility operations, is monitoring electric usage continuously (usually by automated instrumentation) and shutting down certain pre-arranged electric loads or devices if a certain upper threshold of electric usage is approached. there are two reasons for doing it, both of them financially motivated.

Power companies sometimes set up an industrial customer or a school with an electric billing rate in steps, i.e. if you are pulling less than this amount of electric current during certain times you get billed at one rate for the electricity you use but if you are pulling MORE than this amount of electric current during that time, you get billed at a higher rate, even if you use the same amount of electricity overall. the highest current you draw during the time period in question is your "peak demand". the power company has to have generating capacity built and in place to generate the sum of all of the "peak demands" of its customers during the highest peak demand period. say that period is 10 am to 12 am during weekdays. if the highest peak demand exceeds the capacity of the power company to generate, they either have to build another power station to cover that 2 hour period each day, which is a waste of money, or they have to buy power from some other power company during those 2 hours which is also expensive. so power companies look for ways to cut down on the highest peak demand. they encourage their large customers to cut back on peak demand during those "highest peak demand periods" by charging them more if they exceed a certain peak demand. customers can stay below this set peak demand limit by monitoring their electric demand and cutting off unnecessary electric loads if they get too close to their demand limit. that is one form of load shedding.

Yhe other way is for the power companies to ask their small customers for permission to install a piece of equipment in their home or business and wire one or two appliances to the equipment which will shut down the appliances based on a radio signal from the power company. the appliances are usually electric water heaters. the power company gives a discount to these customers. then, if the power company sees that it's demand is coming close to its generating capacity, it sends out a signal and cuts off all these appliances. that is also called load shedding.''

Would someone care to precis and add the above info?--GreenSpigot (talk) 02:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Blackouts in Bangladesh
The comment above by DIGIwarez may be true about India, however in Bangladesh the description on Wiki is spot on.

"Up to 8 hours" means just that - it is the observed maximum, it does not mean "exactly 8 hours every day". —Preceding unsigned comment added by M4had (talk • contribs) 13:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The Section on Pakistan
I've done away with that section since it has not one citation and includes an irreverent amount of innuendo and personal opinion in it. I'm all for public coontribution, but that particular section was a complete joke. 01:54, 16 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahm2307 (talk • contribs)

load shedding or runback occour when the load must decrease fast to safe operation in power plants —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.218.222.162 (talk) 20:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Texas Bad Weather Blackouts
Texas is currently facing rolling blackouts. If you search for "rolling blackout" on Twitter, you'll see people complaining. --68.94.197.120 (talk) 14:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Tarrant and Dallas counties confirmed. 99.10.223.83 (talk) 15:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Pakistan
Currently there is a shortage of electricity supply in Pakistan but there seems to be no section based on this - please update it; i recently visited the country and there is a load shedding issue there. If someone can back this up with reliable sources please add this section as well. thanks.Mk762007 (talk) 13:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Effect of "deregulation" on reliability
There is a point there; surely thre's references documenting the effect "gaming the system" had on the availability of electric power in Texas, California, Alberta, and other places? --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:41, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Underrepresentation of developing world
Considering that rolling blackouts are a problem that disproportionately affects the developing world, I templated it (and added Ghana). More help welcome :) HLHJ (talk) 19:43, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Rolling blackout. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100111070338/http://www.adb.org:80/Documents/Periodicals/Impact/IND/200901.asp to http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/Impact/IND/200901.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080331190949/http://www.moneyweb.co.za:80/mw/view/mw/en/page62093?oid=188549&sn=Detail to http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page62093?oid=188549&sn=Detail

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 14:57, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Venezuela
I´m shocked noboby hasmentioned Venezuela here. There have been constant nationwide rolling blackouts for more than 5 years now due to government mismanagement.

I do not have the data with me now, but I live there and it just does not stop. I will start collecting data, but it might take me a while. However, Venezuela might be the most dramatic case of rolling blackouts, and it deserves a whole section I believe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oiolosse (talk • contribs) 14:44, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Why has this article
Why has this article turned into a big historical list by country. This page is like a status update for various faulty electrical grids. It is 80% full of examples. That is the wrong direction. Why isn't it explaining what rolling blackouts are, how they are managed and avoided and what the effects are? Maybe we should split of a list of major rolling blackouts. - Shiftchange (talk) 11:36, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Because that's what Wikipedia processes favor. For every Web item you read that is a thoughtful, authoritative analysis of the effects, causes, and mitigations of rolling blackouts, you can find 1023 factoids saying things like "The lights went out in East Cheem yesterday and scores were momentarily inconvenienced."  As long as you have a little blue number pointing at a reference to the East Cheem Weekly Shopper and  Fishwrap newspaper, you've added good solid Wikipedia content (and you'll have Wikipedia administrators defend that addition).   You want thoughtful critical analysis of something, you're going to have to pay for it.  But Google searches are still free, so you can get all the headline clippings you want for nothing - and "bingo", there's your "Featured Article". --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:08, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's as if the article on "Cats" was a listing...." My neighbor has a cat. There goes a cat down the street.  Garfield was a cat."...
 * At least these were actual events. I am disappointed we don't have the mandatory "Rolling blackouts in popular culture", a section which I understand now the new article templates include automatically. Many Wikipedia editors have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. --Wtshymanski (talk) 17:18, 29 September 2017 (UTC)