I'm writing about it, so I may be unwittingly jinxing myself in the process. Nevertheless, I now believe that getting either an electric power generator or a water tank would be a waste of money. Since I have a fixed income, I don't need to be spending anything I can save on something I don't think I'll ever need. I'll explain.
Government Utility Services
I wrote about the state of public services back in 2008. At the time, we had frequent brownouts and every time there was an electricity outage, there was a water outage. Apparently, the water pumps used the same electrical lines as everything else.
Things have changed since then.
Better Public Services?
When I wrote about needing both an electric power generator and a water tank (also called a gravity tank) in 2009, things hadn't improved from the previous year. Well, it's been almost two years since then.
I've learned that the electrical utility was privatized and that the water division made a lot of changes. In the last year, we've had less than 10 brownouts and I can only remember two water outages. During the brownouts, we still had water available.
When the Philippine Utility Department (PUD – the electric company) was run by the government, they didn't seem to care about preventing brownouts. After all, the government makes money no matter what. When it became privatized, the new owners needed to make a profit. You can't make a profit if the meters aren't turning.
We've had so few brownouts that I can't even justify buying an uninterruptible power supply for my desktop PC. It's not that I trust the services to always be running properly. All it will take is one unluckily targeted typhoon to take out services completely for a period of time. I think that will be an exception to the decent service we're experiencing now.
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This article is published as: I may No Longer need an Electric Power Generator or a Water Tank at my House
Hello RT, you are lucky. We've not had a brownout in about a week. :) The other day I found my PC had been running for four days without rebooting. That's a long time for no brownouts in Northern Cebu Province.
They keep telling us, a new plant has gone online so there will be plenty of power. Yeah right. I don't bother to listen any more. These are scheduled brownouts due to low power.
When there is trouble on the lines our power company is quick to fix that.
One of my favorite pictures was taken when a couple of repair main drove up on their motorcycle. The guy on the back was holding onto their bamboo ladder!
So picture a couple of Filipino driving around town with a ladder on a bike.. haha.. Must not be common as I only saw it one time.
I understand the limited income all to well. I need a generator and a multicab would be nice too.
Most of the time our water doesn't go out during brownouts but lately they have been during the long brownouts.
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