Power cut-off. Saving energy?

For some reason I woke up around 3:00 am last night, which usually doesn't happen. I wanted to check what time it was, and noticed that there was no power. What could be the reason? A shortcut, forgot to pay the electricity bill, a problem in the electricity network, all very well possible. When I looked outside the window, our neigbourhood looked very dark. So, I decided it must have been a problem in the network, and went to bed again.

In the morning, there was still no electricity. After asking around we found out that it was not a network problem, but that the electricity was simply cut off in our neigbourhood. In the evening at 19:30 there would be electricity again!
This kind of thing happens sometimes here. It is a way of saving energy. But for as far as I knew, it is only done in summer, when the aircos are operating day and night. The energy problems seem to be getting more and more serious, as the airco season has not started yet.

A practical difficulty is the fact that these power cut-offs are not communicated so well (if at all). This one was supposedly announced in some newspaper! I guess I must have missed that issue ;-) So most of the times, people are taken by surprise, which caused some small problems here and there: no power to open the garage door, telephone not working and mobile phone batteries empty, the electric front gate could not open, etc. It is on days like these that you realise how much we depend on electricity in daily life.

On the positive side, we took the opportunity of the power cut, to have dinner by candle light, and to play cards in the evening. Gezellig!

Later this evening, everything was back to normal again. But much later than the announced 19:30 .... of course.