Well, it just sucks to be me...or at least living in my area of Kosovo! With this new KEK (Krappy Electric of Kosovo as I like to call them) I live in a C-area which means that I get whatever power is left-over after giving A-areas 24/7 and B areas 5:1 hours of power. Reverse the power schedule for the B-areas and you get my current power schedule. One hour of power and five hours off. It really sucks! Every night when I go home the second task, after bringing the begging Smokey inside, is to light a fire in the wood stove at least in the living room to try to bring the room temperature up to around 70�F...it hovers around 55�F without a fire and the electric heaters going. Last night I was tired when I got home at 10pm so I just whipped out the good, ol' thermal sleeping bag and climbed into bed with my laptop :)
I'm seeing messages for people looking for generators and hearing about people renting mega-generators to power their entire houses now with this new power schedule. The schedule is based on the percentage of people paying for power in an area. The part that really sucks is that if you pay 100% of your bill and two neighbor pay 0%, it brings your percentage down to 33% and would change your grouping in the power schedule! But since KEK possesses no mechanism for selectively disconnecting houses that do not pay (in addition to disconnecting people illegally connected...okay, they are disconnected but they have no qualms about running back out and illegally connecting once the power company leaves!) I guess this is the next best thing. But as I have always complained, it's not quite fair to put Gracanica in the C-area for not paying bills when KEK has never issued a bill for the electricity!
Now, again I'm hearing rumors that KEK will issue bills (this is only the 3rd-4th time I've heard it in the past two years) and we'll have to pay the power for the past six years (of course, you can't be charged for power when you don't have any so the bills shouldn't be too high!) What some people think will happen is that Serbia will deal with KEK to pay off the electricity for the area in order to keep the support of the Serbian community in Kosovo. It might not be a monetary payment but rather Serbia will import power to Kosovo as a trade-off for the payment of what KEK says Gracanica owes in bills. So we shall see what happens!
