Since its opening 11 years ago, guests at Sheraton Addis had to spend the night on Thursday in complete darkness. The five-star luxury hotel had no electric power beginning 11:00pm until 4:00pm the following day.
 

Engineers from the hotel and those from the power company were trying to figure out what indeed had gone wrong, and how power supply from the national grid failed to bypass the giant generator the hotel has in its compound. They had not figured it out by the time we went to press on Saturday.
 

It was, however, a rare experience that kept the hotel's top management members on their toes throughout the night. Although the hotel's manager is grateful and proud of the team spirit and solidarity demonstrated by his entire staff members, it was a dreadful incident and a depressing reminder of the nation's insecurity in terms of provision of power.

The power company is aggressively working towards enhancing its generation capacity four-fold from the 865Mw it produces now. Five mega hydro electric projects are under construction. But these are projects in the long stretch, designed to meet an annual increase on demand of 21pc.

In the short term, though, there is a painfully depressing gap between demand and supply. The country is short of electric power by 120Mw. The company has rented two mega generators from foreign companies, and installed them in Bishoftu (DebreZeit) and Adama (Nazareth). Not counting what the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) pays to buy diesel, rent for six months would cost the nation close to 450 million Br.
 

Yet, these generators cannot fully cover the gap. There still is a deficit of 40Mw. This was meant to be covered by an additional generator to be installed in Mekanisa area, after a fund is secured from the World Bank. This could probably be the reason why policymakers - from the Prime Minister to the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alemayehu Tegenu - were bold enough to tell Parliament and promise the public there would no more power shedding.
 

Alas! Gossip learnt that what was promised by the World Bank has not been arrived on time, thus there is no generator roaring around Mekanisa. This has put managers of the utility company in a tough situation, claims gossip. They do not want to embarrass their bosses by announcing power rationing; on the other hand, they are in no position to keep supplying power as if there is no deficit.
 

Neither could they tell the public - as they did last year - that the company is undertaking maintenance works of its facilities and lines. And much of the shortage comes not as a result of reducing volume of water in the dams, but rather, a growing demand due to EEPCo's expansion of services to several hundred towns across the country.
 

What EEPCo's managers have opted to do, it appears, is to quietly execute a shedding plan without saying a word to the public, disclosed gossip. That was what the Sheraton and much of Addis Abeba experienced last week. Whether or not the utility company has the courage to announce to the public, ironically, power shedding of two or three times a week, or every other week, seems inevitable; it will likely be part of life for the next several months, perhaps up until next June, according to gossip.

Tighten up your electric belt, guys!