“UPS” (Uninterrupted power supply), the dreary days of 2008-13 when load-shedding affected every facet of our lives and how a simple but ingenuous device helped us survive.
The first time I had to explain ‘load-shedding’ (rolling blackouts in American parlance) to a foreigner was when I was visiting Turkey in 2014. I was talking to some Turkish friends and mentioned the word ‘load-shedding’. They looked at me as if I had spoken some alien language and asked me what it meant? I tried to tell them that in Pakistan, we would lose electricity intermittently for hours, sometimes for multiple hours at a time. They had trouble contextualizing it, and I was envious for their privileged life.
The main source of electricity in Pakistan is through hydroelectric power. In layman terms, water is dammed up and then allowed to fall from a certain height and the falling water’s kinetic energy moves motors which produce electricity. Pakistan is also a fast growing country, with a higher birth rate than most of the world. That means the supply of electricity remains the same while the demand keeps increasing. But even without this demand-supply issue, there are issues with electricity transfer and theft (so-called ‘line losses’) which means that even if the supply is equal to demand, there is some shortfall.
In the 1990s, there were some periods when we faced load-shedding but it was sporadic. Between 1998 and 2008, no new electricity generation products were initiated while the population kept growing. It was also when a military dictator was ruling the country so there was not much political accountability. In 2008, a civilian government came into power and was almost immediately faced with multiple crises. Terrorism, electricity shortage, a belligerent military, and relentless judiciary. That is when the shit hit the fan. There were frequent riots in Punjab and other parts of the country when there were prolonged shutdowns. To overcome the electricity shortage, the new government sought help from Independent Power Producers (IPPs), which were privately owned and charged much more for the same units of electricity than hydroelectric power.
I was in my first year of medical school, in Lahore. I remember having alternate hour load-shedding for most of the day. We would charge our phones and run the AC while we could. Sleeping at night in the hot summer months of Lahore without an AC was not fun. I remember once sleeping on the roof alongside my classmates when we didn’t have electricity for the whole night. One way to combat this problem was through electric generators that ran on diesel fuel. But the cost for such generators and the constant need for fuel was prohibitive for many middle and lower-middle class households and businesses.
Enter the U.P.S. A U.P.S. is a shoe box sized device which is connected to a battery (similar to a car battery), that stores electricity and then discharges it during load-shedding. A standard U.P.S. in Pakistan (foreign-made) probably cost as much, if not slightly less than a standard generator. This led to the phenomenon of desi UPSes, that were soldered together by local electricians and were relatively efficient in powering a couple of fans and some lights in the house. They were attached to car batteries and used throughout the country, more so in bigger cities. They also frequently broke down, since they were not manufactured with the highest standards out there. The batteries needed water to be replaced/replenished every two weeks or they would be out of commission too. Since the U.P.S. required separate wiring for the appliances that were to be powered by it, it meant that initial installation took a day or two. Fans would whir a certain way when powered by U.P.S., and that whir was hard to miss. When the lights went out and the fan(s) started whirring, you knew it was load-shedding time.
They reminded me of Pakistan’s democracy, homemade, built in local circumstances, being kept together with duct tape, forever creaking and needing frequent ‘interventions’.
I lived in my own place in Lahore in 2012-13 and had a desi U.P.S. there. Before that, we tried hooking up the house’s electric system to a small generator that would automatically turn on whenever there was load-shedding. That system never worked so a UPS was brought in as the last resort. It worked fine for the first few months but then it started giving me trouble. The nearby electrician was on my speed-dial on those days. Most of the time, I would have to go pick an electrician up from their shop and drop them off. During one such trip, an electrician said these immortal words while recounting a story: “Either you change your water (i.e. migrate) or you’ll keep changing the UPS battery’s water (i.e. stuck here)”.
In the midst of the dark, powerless days of 2008-13, the one thing that bound Pakistanis together, other than hope, was the U.P.S. and the whirring fans. When the political government finished its five year term (2008-13), there was a peaceful transition to another political party, for the first time in Pakistan’s history. The incoming party paid off the ‘circular debt’ (government had borrowed money to pay off the IPPs and was unable to pay them earlier) and there was a significant decrease in power outages. Loadshedding almost never truly went away, neither did the need for having a U.P.S., but the frequency surely did go down after 2013.
The only time since I changed my water (i.e. moved to the US) and faced a prolonged power outage was in 2021 during the Texas winter storm. Using our outside charcoal-run grill to boil water and warm food and then bundling under multiple comforters to survive felt like living in the third world once again.