Consumers may pay extra during peak - Eskom

[kaspaas]

Everybody gets a free allocation of electricity.

When is this used? Peak or off peak?

 

[Paulr]

In Kempton Park we already have "ripple relays" where the home geysers get switched off during some peak periods.

Also, I remember a very old project in "Everyday Electronics", a UK magazine, where you could build a thing to run your wahing machine, tumble dryer etc. late at night when the "off peak" periods are active (was in 1994 I think)

So the concept is not all that new, is just a case of how it is going to be implemented.......

PS - Why oh why doesn't Eskom acknowledge solar water heating?!?

 

[JTech]

The ripple relays work on 1050Hz tones superimposed on the mains, very very old, they still run that in some parts of the West Rand but nowadays they use more modern relays which respond to actual data on the mains.

When I was young I decoded these ripples and found that the streetlights are also controlled with ripples, I managed to turn the yard lights off in sync with the streetlights, except my dad got pissed off that the yard light would come on in the day with the streetlights when the system went out of sync due to power failure in the middle of a transmission (downside of the analogue system)

 

[Prometheus]

It is do-able, from an engineering standpoint but I have very little faith that Eskom can do it, they can't even fix a nuclear reactor without having to bring in people from overseas. So yes it will be a cock-up of note.

And there lies the crux of the matter. The technology is there, but no one here is able to implement it. We can't even get decent broadband here. So how do they expect to implement this. I don't think there's any reason to worry here as its arrival is probably imminent™.

 

[JTech]

The technology is there, but no one here is able to implement it

I am able to implement it but the problem is that I am blocked/barred from doing it because I am not indigienous person. Actually I wouldn't want to implement such a stupid thing anyway as there are better ways of dealing with the electricty "crisis"