Parts of Skopje went without power again today - the kind of morning news residents no longer find surprising; they just wonder whether the fridge will hold out. Parts of Butel and Kisela Voda were cut off, due to planned work on the grid.

In Butel the power was off from 8 to 12, on Ho Chi Minh, Prishtinska, Prizrenska, Marko Krale, Ljubo Petrovic and Butelska streets. In Kisela Voda the outage lasted longer - from 9 to 15 - on Boris Trajkovski Boulevard (the buildings opposite Rasadnik-Trim and Lum, Elena Luka) and on parts of Mihail Chakov street.

Planned outages are a normal part of maintaining any electrical grid - that's not in dispute. What is in dispute is something else: how often these "planned maintenance" jobs repeat in the same neighborhoods, and why, in a city like Skopje, a few hours without power is still treated as routine rather than the exception.

For a household with a small child, for a pensioner with medication in the fridge, or for a small business that runs on electricity, six hours without power is no trifle. It's a lost day, spoiled food, interrupted work. The outages were announced, which is good - but the question nobody asks out loud is whether the grid is being upgraded at all at the pace the city is growing, or just "maintained" until it falls over on its own.