First prize for manufacturing is no loadshedding. Second best is scheduled loadshedding. This is the butchered Eskom schedule for Cosmo City for July (the pattern repeats exactly every month) and still our guys get it wrong; taking down production lines when not required or forgetting to stop when required (which is even worse).
This is what the schedule looks like for our plant based on actual stages. We closed 1-3 July to try and dodge Stage 6. For the rest of the month we are 75% down on production with 100% of the expenses.
A similar situation but completely different industry: KFC. When load shedding is over, they can’t start selling burgers immediately. They cook the chicken under pressure (that’s the real invention, the so-called secret herbs and spices thing is just marketing), and that takes another chunk of time. So if you swing into your local KFC 10 minutes after load shedding, you will be disappointed.
I think the schedules should also add some reduced loadshedding in the evenings. It’s confusing when the stage changes every night. Rather have no stage changes in the evening. All stages have gaps in the evening. E.g. Stage 1 might have no slots over 00h00 to 05h00. Stage 2 becomes what now is Stage 2 in day and Stage 1 in early hours.
I agree with having shuffled schedule such that you don’t have 18h00 to 20h30 each night for a 4 nights in a row.
Same caught me once Now limiting charge rate while still load shedding, via DVCC to something sensible until ESS conditions cleared. Just to remember switching the rate limit off afterwards
Groetnis
The only thing we can do is manually intervene during load shedding. No way to automate this…
But if Eskoms se Push doesn’t have the updated info (as happened last night) the message reads ‘no planned outages’ and then you wake up to a surprise today…
I chose to recharge them fast. Why wait hours if the same can be done in minutes … just get it over with.
Incidentally, as a side note, it seems it is quite good to help the cells stay nicely in balance, this “fast recharge”, Victron in charge of it all.
Thinking further on that “complaint” of mine … so what if it was nearly 10kw?
The dishwasher would have run in any event, as would the geyser … so not saving anything by taking it scheduling/spreading those must-have loads over a longer period of time.
Limiting charge rate is to prevent charging from the utility if ESS is below the set level due to blackouts discharging the packs. When utility comes back, it will charge the banks. I prefer solar to do that. So then I rate limit the charge until battery charge level is above the ESS set %. My solar can charge em fast enough, bout 170A worth.
If we have nice sunny weather every day with the 7.5h off LS every 24h, I would not have run on Keep Charged, would have been a non-issue.
EDIT: Read, I just wasn’t bothered after the first few days to try and keep up managing the SOC anymore. That “stress” versus a few rand more on Eskom … Eskom won.
Side thought: Last year and now this year, I noticed a change in the weather patterns in Cpt.
So much so that the “I’m going off-grid”, the “I’m disconnecting from Eskom” manne in cities, that I want to ask them “So when last did you have a week or more of little to no sun … a few times every few weeks?”.
Generator … always the answer. Okaaaaaay, sorted you are then.
Haha. Church sermon two Sunday’s ago, the minister said he is convinced Eskom is doing this to give us all a little time to sit by the fire and properly contemplate our lives, spend time with families, and so forth.
He is not wrong. I went on holiday two years ago, and the place where we stayed had no backup. We ended up playing cards by LED-lamp. The kids loved it so much, my daughter keeps asking when is it load-shedding again so we can play cards. I’m almost sorry I have so much backup…
There are of course some people who claim this was planned all along.
I disagree. Our government (and indeed, humanity as a whole) rarely have the ability to plan these things. More often, we fail to plan, and the opportunists (who will not let a good crisis go to waste) swoops in.
Yesterday I was arguing with someone who claimed the fuel price is “planned” because “they” want to push us all towards electrical vehicles.
(Like the people most likely to benefit from that doesn’t already benefit from the sale of conventional vehicles, right? ).
It all reminds me of what my standard 3 English teacher always said: If you believe that, you can believe anything.
)
Now limiting charge rate while still load shedding, via DVCC to something sensible until ESS conditions cleared. Just to remember switching the rate limit off afterwards 
