South Africans have been told to expect load shedding and power outages for the next few years, with the next winter season projected to have more blackouts than the last. I've personally experiened a number of surges and the like in suburban Johannesburg, resulting in computer failures and all the rest.
One useful resource to at least save your data during a possible power failure is a UPS: uninterrupted power supply. Basically you route all your electricity through this box - about the size of a shoebox, sometimes bigger - and when the power goes out, the charger in the your UPS kicks in and gives you a chance to shutdown your computer at your leisure. I think it gives you up to 4 hours additional computing time. But this is the sort of thing all Jozi residents should have.
In the wider context of the world - South Africa is not the only country with aging electrical infrastructure and a looming energy capacity/supply crisis - batteries are likely to make a comeback. Unfortunately, the laws of the universe once again demonstrate just what a wonderful and magical resource oil actually is. Despite great minds working on the issue, it turns out that the electrical car's batteries are not only extremely expensive, but the limits to the power storage are not easily extended. Smaller batteries like the lithium batteries in cellphones and notebooks unforunately do not extend much further, certainly not porportionally, as we expect the same sort of power (energy) output motoring through suburbia over the next era.
Jim Kunstler says it best: No combination of alternatives is going to allow us to use the highway systems and continue our easy motoring culture as we are doing now.
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