Lenghty power cut today...

G

Generator Man

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My suburb's power went off at 16:00, no power until 21:30.

Thank God for having back-up power, it's amazing that I took a drive around my neighbourhood ( + - 100 homes) and in totalonly 4 including mine had some sort of back-up power plan.

Have people not learned yet?
 
it costs ..... not many people that can afford backup power bru :o
 
Mephisto_Helix said:
it costs ..... not many people that can afford backup power bru :o
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Well that might be the case, but then the average house price in this area is between R1.5m and R4m, so you'd guess that they can afford R8k's worth of a small backup generator:p

Thing is since load shedding started, people seem to think that suddenly electricity has hailed from the heavens and we'll never have problems again. Generator had a busy nite with further outages and on/off's lasting a few minutes.

I also noticed the Eskom consumption meter deep in the purple for the first time ever last nite, although I take that with a pinch of salt and it was totally unrelated to the outages as they seem to have only affected my area.
 
Generator Man said:
My suburb's power went off at 16:00, no power until 21:30.

Thank God for having back-up power, it's amazing that I took a drive around my neighbourhood ( + - 100 homes) and in totalonly 4 including mine had some sort of back-up power plan.

Have people not learned yet?
Click to expand...
Sounds like you need to do better marketing meneer...:)
 
Luckily we have recently installed a battery bank backup power supply for our home, which can last about 8 hours. We don't have to worry about diesel or attending to the supply, it recharges itself :p
 
Catal said:
Luckily we have recently installed a battery bank backup power supply for our home, which can last about 8 hours. We don't have to worry about diesel or attending to the supply, it recharges itself :p
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so what kind of batteries do those things use (regular UPS batteries?) and how much are they to replace, because eventually you will have to?
 
Generator Man said:
Well that might be the case, but then the average house price in this area is between R1.5m and R4m, so you'd guess that they can afford R8k's worth of a small backup generator:p

Thing is since load shedding started, people seem to think that suddenly electricity has hailed from the heavens and we'll never have problems again. Generator had a busy nite with further outages and on/off's lasting a few minutes.

I also noticed the Eskom consumption meter deep in the purple for the first time ever last nite, although I take that with a pinch of salt and it was totally unrelated to the outages as they seem to have only affected my area.
Click to expand...

Well you overlook one fact- The value of the homes has nothing to do with people's ability to buy generators. They could have bought for 1.5 and NOW the home is worth 3-4 million. Most people's homes have doubled in value in the past 5 years, but that doesn't mean the occupants are liquid.
What do you get powered with little 8K generators?
 
sandmanm34 said:
Sounds like you need to do better marketing meneer...:)
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People are totally apathic when it comes to generators at the moment, simply mention a generator and you get the trademark "but our power has been fixed, no need to spend useless money pah".

This past week I have received calls and e-mails from 3 pretty large generator companies that are shutting doors and wanted to ask us if we were interested in buying their stock at cost - quite sad I must say, but at the end of the road people have simply invested too much in stock of small generators which are now worth less than selling saw dust, unless you are well established in the market or export to neighbouring countries.
Less competition will mean more business for us :p
 
Hosehead said:
Well you overlook one fact- The value of the homes has nothing to do with people's ability to buy generators. They could have bought for 1.5 and NOW the home is worth 3-4 million. Most people's homes have doubled in value in the past 5 years, but that doesn't mean the occupants are liquid.
What do you get powered with little 8K generators?
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True, but if you see the kind of cars driving around, 3 houses down from me resides an M6 and a brand new GTI DSG, 4 homes up there is a brand new 135i, opposite that a nice black RS4 and the list goes forth.

I was using R8k as a ballpark figure. You can buy a "small" 6.5kVA petrol open gennie of good quality for around R6k-R6.5k (you can pick them up for around R5k from the likes of builder's warehouse etc, but to be honest those are better left alone).

I currently have 4 homes around Johannesburg and one in Gaborone Botswana that are running off these, you simply connect it through a manual changeover switch (R250 or so if your home system is 60 amps..) and connect the main feed into the DB by bridging into the zones that you want to feed, skipping pool pump, electric stove and geyser you can pretty much run everything else.

I have one that is supplying a rather large house, 3-bedrooms, kitchen, outside lighting (mostly energy saving bulbs) a couple of outbuildings and the garage, a couple of PC's and 2 televisions and it's not even taking strain.

If noise is an issue then a 5.5kVA diesel silent type will do the same job, that is what I am using at my house and it's running everything except the mentioned geysers, pool pump and electric stove. Cost on this would be + - R10k + changeover switch + cabling.
 
Catal said:
Luckily we have recently installed a battery bank backup power supply for our home, which can last about 8 hours. We don't have to worry about diesel or attending to the supply, it recharges itself :p
Click to expand...
8 hours hey?
I'd like to see that.....:p
Cost? rreplacement cost of batteries 2 years down the line?
 
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