Parts of Skopje and the surrounding area woke up without power again today - planned, the supplier says, due to technical work on the electricity distribution network. For those who built their day around the fridge, the water heater, and the internet, „planned" is cold comfort.

According to the published locations, Katlanovo and the surrounding villages are left without supply - Badar, Kozhle, Blace, as well as the tunnels near Katlanovo - in the period from 8 to 15:30. In part of Saraj, specifically the residents „behind the old mosque," the power is cut from 8:30 to 12.

Planned maintenance outages are a normal thing in any network - the problem here isn't that they happen, but how often they happen and how long they last. Seven and a half hours without power for a household is no small thing: it's spoiled food, interrupted work from home, switched-off medical devices for some. The notice arrives, the locations get published - but the question that remains is why a network that gets „modernised" every year still needs such long outages for routine maintenance.