Cost Effective Household Load Shedding Solutions

Load shedding comes and goes, in this article we give some tips on what must you do to make this inconvenience easier on you
and your family.

When reacting to load shedding, often we tend to over react and attempt to minimize the disturbances for everything in our house:

• Lights
• Kettles
• Microwaves
• Fridges
• TV
• Decoders

Essentially we want everything to continue running with no disturbance. However this uneducated mindset leads to an expensive solution which can be avoided whilst still maintaining a
comfortable environment.

In my household

We have narrowed down what we would like to remain running and have managed to do this very cost effectively. Here’s my personal recommendations:

Food

• Connect a two plate gas stove to a gas bottle and have
• Keep a dedicated pan and pot available to cater for any fried or boiled meal (This can also double up boiling water for coffee and tea).

Lighting

• Integrate LED down lights to a dedicated distribution board as it must be done by a qualified electrician to ensure that it is legal and safe. However this is a costly exercise. Alternatively use the suggestion below:

Entertainment

• Position a 2KVA inverter with two 100ah batteries in the lounge next your entertainment system to power on our TV, decoders and a lamp with a LED globe. (a 1KVA inverter with one 100ah battery will also work depending on the load).

Fridges

• Don’t worry about fridges as they will remain cold during the 2hour outage unless you go overboard with opening the fridge door constantly.

When the power fails

• Switch on the lamp and this gives us enough light to get our act together. We still have our stash of candles in the kitchen and light one up in case we need to get something to drink. More importantly, our entertainment system stays on for around 2.5 to 3 hours which allows us to watch a movie and then we normally call it a
  night.

Below is a runtime selection guide to help you know what UPS you need to get.

For others, they rely on zero inconvenience and so if your budget allows, there are seamless solutions we can offer for which you should talk to one of our sales consultants for a full needs analysis and solution.