Inside the Haywire World of Beirut's Electricity Blackouts, and the Struggle Faced By Residents To Keep Their Lights and Wi-Fi On and Gadgets Charged (wired.com)

Blackouts are common in the Lebanese capital, forcing energy consumers to pay whoever can get them power. Wired looked at how the residents of Beirut keep their lights on -- and their gadgets charged -- in the face of the rolling blackouts. From the report: Electrical power here does not come without concerted exertion or personal sacrifice. Gas-powered generators and their operators fill the void created by a strained electric grid. Most people in Lebanon, in turn, are often stuck with two bills, and sometimes get creative to keep their personal devices -- laptops, cell phones, tablets, smart watches -- from going dead. Meanwhile, as citizens scramble to keep their inanimate objects alive, the local authorities are complicit in this patchwork arrangement, taking payments from the gray-market generator operators and perpetuating a nation's struggle to stay wired.

Lebanon has been a glimmering country ever since the 15-year civil war began in 1975, and the reverberations from that conflict persist. These days there is only one city, Zahle, with electricity 24/7. Computer banks in schools and large air conditioners pumping out chills strain the grid, and daily state-mandated power cuts run from at least three hours to 12 hours or more. Families endure power outages mid-cooking, mid-washing, mid-Netflix binging. Residents rely on mobile phone apps to track the time of day the power will be cut, as it shifts between three-hour windows in the morning and afternoon, rotating throughout the week.

Once called the Paris of the Middle East, sometimes the region's Sin City, Beirut's supplementary power needs are effectively under the control of what is known here as the generator mafia: a loose conglomerate of generator owners and landlords who supply a great deal of the country's power. This group is indirectly responsible for the Wi-Fi, which makes possible any number of WhatsApp conversations -- an indispensable lifeline for the country's refugees, foreign aid workers, and journalists and locals alike.

Comments

Re:What do you expect?

[SuricouRaven]

English wiring is actually far superior to the US, and has a few slight advantages over the rest of Europe.

For one, we're on 230V domestic, not 110 - which means no need to have two-phase power in domestic use for heavy loads. The really heavy appliances like showers and cookers might need wiring directly into the breaker panel, but it's still single phase all over. We also have sockets with a few built-in safety mechanisms - an internal fuse in the plug so every appliances gets it's own fuse, rated to the appliance, and the sockets have a safety shutter mechanism which is keyed to the earth pin on the plug - if that pin isn't in the socket won't open, so you can't stick a fork in it.

Re: What do you expect?

[Miamicanes]

Do British plugs or outlets ALSO contain GFCI or AFCI protections? Likewise, are British appliances allowed to take for granted that hot & neutral are correctly polarized, or do they have to assume the two *could* plausibly be reversed & design accordingly with double-chassis isolation?

If British applianes (like most American appliances made prior to ~1980) are allowed to assume that correct polarity is guaranteed & 'neutral' really IS 'neutral', connecting one to an American hot+hot+ground 220v outlet (using a hacked power cord) could be quite dangerous, especially if the outlet's 'ground' was less than ideal. In the US, at least, it was once common for appliances to take correct polarity for granted & expose things like chassis screws that *could* become energized if polarity were reversed by a miswired outlet & ground didn't work properly (or the consumer used d 3-to-2 adapter & didn't bother to connect the ground to anything... which was almost ALWAYS the case).

In continental Europe, they were *never* allowed to make assumptions about polarity, and always had to assume the worst & isolate it accordingly. But because British plugs *had* to be grounded & (afaik) were illegal for anyone besides a licensed electrician to work on, I can definitely see manufacturers in the UK being allowed to take a correctly-wired outlet for granted.

Moral: if you rig up a plug to connect a British device to an American 220v outlet, MAKE SURE the outlet's ground connection is FLAWLESS, and strongly consider putting a GFCI somewhere between the device & panel (so it will instantly break the circuit if ANY current is detected flowing to ground). Because to a British device that assumes 'neutral' REALLY IS 'neutral', an American 220v outlet is going to connect the wire that the appliance ASSUMES is 'neutral' to a 'hot' wire *regardless* of how the outlet is wired (because in the American 220v outlet, BOTH wires are 'hot')

Accurate

[StikyPad]

I was just in Beirut last month â" this article is spot on. Worse is outside of Beirut, where the official electricity is only on for about 3 hours per day, and gray market providers serve the other 21 hours, at a much higher price. One girl told me her family spends $400 USD/mo just for a few lights and occasional A/C in one room, and while there are some very wealthy families in Lebanon, there are far more people barely scraping by.

The three biggest problems are: 1) The constitutional mandate for equal representation from each major religion, and the lack of cooperation therein to create new infrastructure projects.

2) Entrenched corrupt interests in government. Dynastic families control the three most powerful positions, and they have entrenched interests in preserving the status quo, profiting off the failures of government by providing for-profit services in the private sector.

3) Iran and Saudi both use Lebanon as a proxy, exercising and influencing soft and hard power in the region. They each pour money into the country, funding fundamentalist teaching and intolerance, and ratcheting up the tension. There *is* a sense of both comraderie and war weariness amongst most Lebanese, which has probably prevented another civil war, but until Lebanon stands on her own, she will continue to be vulnerable to this undue influence from neighbors in the region. Which is a shame, because culturally, historically, and geographically, itâ(TM)s one of the most remarkable and beautiful countries Iâ(TM)ve ever visited.