Nasty surprise today in the morning. The guy who owns the electricity generator came by to tell us that he has just raised the price of electricity from 2000 dinars to 3500 dinars per amp and if you don't like it go spend your days in darkness, oh and he is not turning on the generator after 2am. tough luck insomniacs.
These neighbourhood generators are our main source of electricity since the baghdad grid is really not reliable and has been getting worse, so generator owners are twisting our arms now. and it is not like you can switch from one provider to another, you are lucky if you have someone in your neighborhood who has a really big one and decides to sell electricity. In some areas poeple saw ythais as a business oppertunity, get a huge generator and make lots of money because on average you get more electricity from them than from the national grid.
The reason behind the raise in prices is the price and availabity of fuel, and you can't really argue with him. Everyone who owns a car has to either spend the night in his car queuing up in front of a gas station or buy very expensive gas, which is probably cut with anything from water to diesel, on the black market. The other thing is that kerosene which is the fuel most iraqi homes use for heating is also getting more expensive and harder to get. so these days whenver we hear the dingdingding of the kerosene guy (it is a a barrel tank pulled by a horse thing) we start running out to make sure he stops, and you have to be nice to Mr. Kerosene delivery otherwise he will not come next time.
The extra containers we bought for fuel srorage during the war have been very usefull.
Just looked at Unqualified Offerings he has linked to lots of charts and numbers about the electricity situation in Iraq.