Load Shedding blues

viper357

viper357

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Load shedding is here to stay guys, best get your tools out and start building those UPS systems.

Stott said South Africans need to be aware that load shedding is a reality to deal with for the next few years. "[Load shedding] is not short-term until we construct large power stations." said Stott. "Demand and supply are very tight."

Load shedding could continue for the next five to seven years. During this time, Eskom is looking at various sources of energy. New gas turbines are to be built and a coal power plant is to be completed in 2012, he said.

Renewable energy sources, including a 100-megawatt wind facility in Vredendal and a solar thermal plant in Upington, are also being considered.

Eskom is trying to get approval for nuclear energy plans scheduled for construction in 2010.

The possibility of importing electricity from the Democratic Republic of Congo is also under consideration, said Stott. -- Sapa
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Get a generator, have my entire house's electric system wired to a genie with auto switch. keep in mind the sort of load shedding we have been having in JHB, is normally 4-5 hours periods.

You going to have to have a :shit: load of batteries to keep all your heaters running in Winter ???
 
eish, my problem is that i stay in a complex, the crazy old bat next door will kill me if i start up a gennie! :lol:

+ i heard that the proper UPS batteries are seriously expensive not to mention the "silent" type gennies (not even sure if they're silent enough for the old bat)...
 
They are quiet, but you have to an outside area and large enough sound proof housing for it work effectively. May be a problem in a complex. Should get your body corporate to invest a monster unit for the whole complex.

Must be possible, the office park where I work have just install one.
 
hmmm sounds like a plan, will chat to them thanks!
 
Punk, you can use normal car batteries to power a inverter, you only need to use the expensive "deep cycle" batteries if you have frequent power cuts, the trick is to minamise the power drawn from batteries/inverter, got a quote the other day on a 300watt pure sine inverter (R700) and a battery (R600) that gave me 60watts for about 10 hrs.
 
no, you could run your sump return pump and skimmer(which is the most important), but if possible you could fit poly sheets to insulate tank during cuts.
 
U guys in Durbs shouldn't have a heating problem, but in JHB in winter the water temp will drop hectically very quickly, so I think power consumption for a heater needs to be taken in to account or after 5 hours during a cold winter night you are going to have some dead fish.
 
eish just had a small brain fart :) my dad's currently busy installing a small gass geyser, generates 6 litres per minute & is very compact, i think he got the full kit @ builders warehouse for under R2k

couldn't it be handy? eish but then again you could just as well boil water on a little gas stove :confused:
 
sounds like its probably not a good idea (sorry), unless you have a very good way of controlling the heating, and you can't use anything with copper in the system. how cold does it get?
 
ok, bite lower that I expected.. the problem is that heaters chow power, depending on size, eg a 300w heater will pull 25 amps off a battery, then you will have to have more batteries to give a decent backup time. some sort of fuel heating would be better but will be extremely risky, and would have to be monitored constantly. something to think of.....
 
Difficult if have to think of neighbours. Personally pull out the portable gennie and fire it up. And this situation will possibly only happen 5-10 times in winter. Tell the old bat to live with it. Summer you can run UPS no problem, no heater needed.
 
I would have to agree, if you get one of those 650w gensets maybe the exhaust people could modify if to be quieter than a car idling. if that doesn't work the just give her a box of sleeping pills....
 
im gonna be be buying one of those portable 12V car battery charges just to run an air pump and maybe a 1 or 2 12V powerheads.also saving up for a gennie.lucky me im the director of my building,so no one can complain about the noise to me haha
 
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