PowerBrick extensible load-shedding backup station from Wits engineering school

I bet it's MSW too but I guess we can only speculate as there is no detail in the article, even how to buy it if one is dumb enough to do.
 
Engineers and business sense. This device is a whole seven years late. Why are they pricing themselves out of the game. They should just ask R1999 or R2500.
 
So I had a look at the Peco Power website, there were no mentions on the where the product are being sold, only mentions of funding and franchise opportunity, doesn't really look like they are aiming for the consumer market yet, and I highly doubt this really took the prof and his teams 7 years to develop.

From their website, I can see that they wants you to pay R350k for 100 units (inclusive of business supports etc), so that you can then rent out the units to other people and then charge those people for a monthly subscription fee. They have a "proprietary" rent-to-own technology that auto locks the powerbrick at a predetermined time interval which requires a code to unlock after the monthly subscription payment is received.

The more I look at them, the more I feel that this company is not at a mass production phrase, feels like the eskom crisis this year and the fear of continual load shedding for years to come makes this business now feasible to start / expand via a franchise type business model.

I suspect the original goal of this project was to connect solar panels or wind type power generation equipment to the powerbrick instead of relying on the grid, the true ip is probably related to the design which makes it easy to connected power generating equipment and additional bricks with untrained hands. But I can't help to feel that in its current form, the business is not really about providing power to low income household / rural areas, and the talk just feels like a way to improve their branding to get funding via franchise or other VCs in the impact investment space...
 
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You need a couple of these to make a dent so rather go with a Pylontech and cheap inverter if this is your requirement. The tech for this is also readily available so don't know what took them 7 years and was patented. Looks more like they tried to make a business case for a franchise using some proprietary conditional access tech.
 
Swa said:
You need a couple of these to make a dent so rather go with a Pylontech and cheap inverter if this is your requirement. The tech for this is also readily available so don't know what took them 7 years and was patented. Looks more like they tried to make a business case for a franchise using some proprietary conditional access tech.
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Yep, just like a DSTV decoder. You buy and own the hardware, but if you don't pay subs you cannot use it :laugh::ROFL:
Actually that's great for South Africans because they want everything for free, just that it's completely immoral.
 
Vorastra said:
What's amazing about it compared to what you've been using before, and what were you using before?
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Fast charging. Stable. And the rechargeability is awesome. Run smooth and don't have a hissy fit if you run them dry.
I used to sell loads of the RCR123A's to the tactical peeps/cops. These buggers mauled anything else, and most are still going to this day. Plus, the cost savings going rechargeable vs disposable is huge over time.
The company that made 'em - Tenergy - was light years ahead of the game.
This is one of the pair in my EDC torch that I use a lot (also during load shedding), and they have been going strong for almost 9 years.

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