Power in India

As the temperatures climb, so does the pressure on India's electrical grid. So we are already on mandatory cut-backs. Each morning, promptly at 8:00 a.m., the power goes off for an hour. The cutbacks will continue to increase in length and frequency. In the villages, power will be cut back severely during the hot weather. They may only have access for a few hours in the evening, which is one reason why the village well still uses a hand pump. An electric pump would be unusable much of the time.

These cutbacks are in addition to unscheduled power outages that occur regularly throughout the day. For those of us who are at the computer most of the day, it is quite a shock to see your screen go blank in the middle of a document. But there is no sense getting upset because it is just going to happen again. My computer switches to battery, of course, so I can keep going. But if I'm on the internet, the connection is severed and must be restarted. Since I am (finally) on their network, I am dependent on their router which is, of course, powered by electric. Sometimes, it's really hard to make progress during the day.

There are a few rooms with window air conditioners in the Bishop's house and they have plans for installing it in the new House which is under construction. But a/c is a real luxury here and it will be a long time before they raise enough money to actually install it. But people are used to doing without. Schools do not have a/c, nor do offices or government buildings. Texas was hot but we had a swimming pool and air-conditioned houses and cars and offices and grocery stores and churches, etc. Imagine if you couldn't escape the heat day after day.