Are there any RE shows on the horizon?

I used to go to this show in Joburg: Power & Electricity World Africa 2022 | 29 - 30 March 2022
Is there anything better for the smaller players?

Yeah I went there too, once, almost twice. The second time my son had an acute pain in the rough area of the appendix and I opted to not take a chance. First time I missed not one plane flight but two… and then got an email from Safair a day later asking me to rate my flight! :slight_smile:

The year after that Corona hit.

Just a headsup so you are aware of this Kragdag expo near Pretoria… (news for me as well!)

And this one is back after a Covid19 break - INNOVATION, INVESTMENT, INFRASTRUCTURE – ENERGY FOR THE PEOPLE | Solar Show Africa (terrapinn.com)

Yeah they’ve been sending emails warning me to not miss out for days now… :slight_smile:

I was at the Cape Town show earlier this year, so I’m probably not going to bother.

2 years later…
Today and tomorrow. Get there!

Ok, I’m going to the show today.
A big item on the list is CoCT is hosting a discussion on their online (e-filing) system.
Previously you had to register manually with forms. Now you can do this online. Problem is that if you want your manual application reflected on e-filing you have to reapply :frowning:

Old news … City of Cape Town

And it is E-Services, not E-filing (SARS).

I’ll probably pop in this afternoon. Still “graswewnaar” since my beter half is elsewhere on family business, so it takes a bit of arranging :slight_smile:

Off topic aside, the origin of the Afrikaans expression “grasweduwee/wewenaar”, that is apparently from the middle ages. When the husband left on some ill-advised errand, and because of the lack of communication mediums he could be gone for years without anybody knowing if he was still alive, a sufficiently high-ranking church official could give the lady a grace-divorce, allowing her to remarry as if her spouse has passed on. She would then be a grace-widow, which after being rinsed through a bit of French became “grasweduwee” :slight_smile:


So we look forward to this annual event??

I totally missed the show yesterday. Apparently it got fairly quiet towards the afternoon, so I hear. Since I generally go there to meet people rather than see products, it seems I didn’t miss out on much.

The reason… well, bad planning. Being a single parent at the moment, I only got out of the house around 14:30, and then I figured, since there is no spouse here to stress about me going cowboy, and I’ve wanted to do this for a while, I’m going in the EV. It’s short about 20km in range for the trip, but I’ll pop in for a quick charge at Pick-and-Pay in Gardens and that’d be fine.

Well… suffice it to say that between traffic, fully occupied charge stations, and charge stations that needs a physical card despite the GridCars video material suggesting you can do it all from the “app”, I lost another hour on top of the actual driving time, and by then I decided to just drive to the waterfront, buy a coffee, charge the car (which was for free!), and then head over for dinner with some colleagues after the show.

So instead of attending the show, I gave myself a crash course in living with an EV in Cape Town. Which, I have to admit, was not a great experience.

Reading about your real life experiences with a EV makes me want to buy lottery tickets and when I win, get a diesel electric. :slight_smile:

Brainwave, Unimog chassis! It has two diffs!
Pay these guys for a conversion analysis / plan / diagram / parts:

Until I hit “the” issue … wife then needs a EC1 drivers license.
Told her, my love, think about it, never a parking issue ever! Park anywhere!
She is not buying that at all. (sigh)

Remember… my issues isn’t so much with an “EV” as it is with a “short range EV”. The new ones all have >300km ranges and this would have been a non-issue. On the way back, I suspect the severe cold probably had something to do with it, because despite starting with a 90% battery I got home with only 19% remaining (71% of the capacity). The outbound trip started at 100% and I arrived with 51% remaining (only 49% of the capacity). Granted, I did also drive quite a bit faster on the return leg… due to less traffic :slight_smile:

This is the thing about humans generally speaking.

Today you know about “short range EV”.
If you bought a >300km, your driving habits will be adapted, right?

So what are the chances that you then could experience the same one day?

Cause filling up quick at a garage vs recharging time, the key at the end of the day for long-term use of a EV, methinks.

Hence me dreaming about diesel/electric.
No “disruption” irrespective of battery capacity.
Can have a 50km battery capacity for all I care.

You can attribute the EV experience to the show…
I mean you made plans to get there…
What is good about these events is the unexpected things you encounter: A guy (Luke Hutchinson) gave a talk on his experience with installing microgrids in places that don’t have any electricity. It was more about the contracting model of what to build into the project since these sites have nothing!
But I found the technical issues fascinating: No grid to sync with so what then is the best bang for your buck??

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Aaah now for this… we have stats.

Source

95% of trips are under 300km for the average person.