Load Shading in Nepal

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Load Shading in Nepal
Katmandu, Nepal Asia
Friday, January 19, 2007

The Electricity is shut off at pre-arranged times.

I like words, the Nepali people around me have been using the term - Load Shading. -

I sometimes feel stupid, yet I resort to thinking, I am too old, too experienced, too much water has gone over the bridge to think this, I do not understand the term.

What they mean is this, the shut the electricity completely for areas of the city at pre-arranged times. This means where I am living on Mondays and Wednesday between 5:00 and 7::30 PM there is no electricity and also on Friday morning, I think between 6:00 and 8:00 AM.

I am thinking about this, because it is Friday morning and there is no electricity in my room, I can work on my computer because it has a battery good for about 1-2 hours…. hehehe, the lights need to come on.

Biggest problem is I cannot make coffee with my one-cup coffer cooker.

So where did the word - Shading - come from, I can understand load, or the load on the electrical system. Yet, there is not in the shade or middle ground here in my room, it is an outage.

I looked up in my Encarta Encyclopedia on my computer, there is not load-shading, however, there is load shedding.

Load Shedding:
- temporary reduction in electricity supply: a temporary reduction in a supply of electricity as a method of reducing the demand. - (2)

Maybe my hotel is just spelling wrong, I looked up on the Internet and there are pages of Nepal and Load Shading, so not the only place.
Peoplesreview.com.np

I will go do the Wiki thing. I did not find Load Shading, yet I did discover the Load Shedding, however, even that goes on to be redirected to - Rolling blackout -
Wikipedia.org on Load Shedding

My battery is getting weak, I need to conclude my thread of curious word following research.

There is probably a Wikidictionary.com? I will check.
Yep, there is:
Wiktionary.org

There are hazards of following words of research, it is extremely easy for a the curious to get sidetracked. The page explaining about Dictionaries in the Wikipedia is fascinating.
Wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary

No Load Shade, yet again there is load shedding.
load_shedding

Aaagh, low battery warning, 7:48, time to turn it on…

I think this is a what I call - India English - thing, the India people like many countries have their own version of English. I am finding this term mostly on India English pages.
Google.com "Load Shading" Search

Load Shading in Nepal

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Reader Submitted Comments | Deleted Comments (0)

Mridula said on Thursday January 18th, 2007 10:45:00 PM

The correct word is load shedding, and we in India are quite used to it. In my area it happens from roughly 8-9 at night :)

Shading is just the local spin on the spelling.

ash said on Friday January 19th, 2007 12:18:00 PM

When I was in Nepal, my hotels called it 'load shedding' too. The words sound similar, so to non-native english speakers I guess they get confused about spelling. Hell, even I spell stuff wrong! hehe

I got the impression it allowed them to re-distribute electricity to stop things overloading or stop some people being cut out of the loop... it doesn't seem like a good infrastructure, but I would not like to install an electrical grid in a country like Nepal... too unplanned.

My grand parents tell me that when they were young, there were 'power-cuts' or 'blackouts' for a few hours every week or so. My granddad apparently used to run several appliances, mostly light bulbs, off a circuit linked to a couple of car batteris, which he charged with jump-leads when the power comes back on.

Not back-pack suitable to carry a car battery! but if you can get one cheap and you're there for a month or more, might be an option for you...

light bulbs do not care about voltage lower voltage, they simply burn dimmer.

gurungseni said on Sunday January 28th, 2007 12:30:00 AM

Guess how i landed here ? ...by googling "load-shedding in kathmandu" (i wanted the new 21 hrs a week power-cuts schedule)...i never realised we neps call it "load-shading" guess itz become one of those nepalised words. After reading ur blog i even googled load-shading hoping to find the new schedule.

Rajesh said on Sunday December 28th, 2008 09:26:00 PM

I am quite disappointed that most of the people unknowingly used the word "shadding" instead Shedding for load-shedding. I found this blog site trying to find a new "load-shedding" schedule effective from December 29, 2008. I had no luck and tried googling "load shaddng", found many responses. I hope Nepalese pips will not do the same mistake again.

bhusahn said on Thursday January 22nd, 2009 04:48:00 AM

Load shedding it is. But load shading brings back a lot of memories to me.