Solutions to load shedding

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Could I suggest to the admin dudes to start a complete forum on its own called load shedding solutions.Any and all solutions for temperature control,airation,circulation and whatever else is negatively impacted during load shedding.Any solution,no matter what,could posted here.
 
Good idea, this thread will be made a sticky.
 
I set up my ac inverter this morning - car battery>ac inverter>multiplug adaptor.I ran both power heads,both wavemakers and the return pump.It ran well,but I was in a rush so i will set it up again later and see how long it runs before the battery goes flat.As a guide line you pay about R1.30 per watt for an inverter,mine is an 800watt and cost me just over a grand,but you could easily pick up a 200watt for less than R200.00.That should run quite a few goodies in the tank for the duration of a power outage and its cheap.
 
I have all my pumps on a Aquamedic wave so the 200 watt needs to only feed this unit and would work well as the lights would be off, so the wave controller goes into night mode, where only one powerhead and return run, but rotated the powerhead from time to time.

Any ideas where these inverters are available ?
 
Would this kind of setup switch on automatically seeing as these power cuts tend to come into action when not at home.
 
Would this kind of setup switch on automatically seeing as these power cuts tend to come into action when not at home.
Aha!!There is a solution to this.Go to your local electrical wholesaler and as for an eight pin relay with a 220vac coil.What you do is you connect up the ac inverter on the NC contact with whatever pumps and stuff ready to start.when you put 220 an the relay the contact opens and the inverter stays dead.When the power dies(loadshedding)the relay switches back to the NC contact ...et voila,you have an automatic system for like nothing.Relays are cheap,but remember most are only rated for 5A max so dont try to run too many things on it,just the essentials
 
2.1KVA UPS... Runs return pump and SEIO in the display... can last about 4-5 hours...
Also waiting for my AC/DC airpump, will be running that in the sump...
And got a 1.2KW genie for length power cuts....
 
I have all my pumps on a Aquamedic wave so the 200 watt needs to only feed this unit and would work well as the lights would be off, so the wave controller goes into night mode, where only one powerhead and return run, but rotated the powerhead from time to time.

Any ideas where these inverters are available ?

Yeah Makro should have.Any electronics dealers,electrical wholesalers,maybe even eBay!
Try here eBay South Africa
 
well,i have been running both powerheads,both wavemakers and the return pump for nearly 2 hours and its still going strong,so I think thats good enough for me.Now to consider what for cooling during power out?
 
ok,so far a normal car battery can run for four hours,still monitoring,thats with five pumps running.
 
That sounds good. Any idea what wattage the pumps are rated at? Or what pumps are they?
 
2 x Boyu wavemakers,2 x 2000l/h powerheads(not sure what they are will ask Liaquat) and a 2000l/h return pump(also not sure what its too old)
 
My solution!

Client of mine (i'm a powerplate instructor as a student job) sells gennie's etc. asked her the best advice I could get for my system.

Said I wanted something that could run 150watts for around 4 or 5 hours.

She just brought me an inverter, hooked up to 2 batteries and some relay (or something like that) that turns it on in case of a power failure.

Total cost: R800 :thumbup:
 
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