I am generally a glass half full kind of guy.
But this is getting out of hand, our power went off at 14:20 on Sunday, it is still off, our municipality is blaming Eskom, Eskom is blaming them / parts availability.
To be honest I am quite shocked at how quickly things unraveled, if you had asked me a week ago what I thought about our local power grid I would have said its rock solid, well seems like I was deeply mistaken.
But this has given me a unique challenge : Living “Off grid” for 2 days, and so far so good even tough my system could be considered “small” by comparison to some of the members on here.
1x 3kVA Multiplus
2x Pylontech US2000B V2
1.65KW of panels
I have had uninterrupted power since the outage occurred on Sunday because I managed my loads very carefully, this whole experience again highlighted to me how low we can get our power usage if we put some effort into it (granted my current setup would not have survived this in the winter)
To make matters even worse : There is still no estimate time on when the repairs will be complete.
@PJJ I think you highlight exactly what we all fear and need to plan for… The “draadkar” (small cheap car) that gets us from A to B when we need it as a last resort. I think all our Muni’s are in the same situation - hanging in there and hoping for no “big” infrastructure failures.
I wonder how this titbit I just stumbled across, will affect SA’s grid, seeing it needs repairs on all levels …
Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce released the results from the Risks in the Semiconductor Supply Chain Request for Information (RFI) issued in Sept. 2021. Key findings from the report provided data-driven information about the depths of the semiconductor shortage and underscored the need for the President’s proposed $52 billion in domestic semiconductor production.
The RFI showed that median inventory held by chips consumers (including automakers or medical device manufacturers, as examples) has fallen from 40 days in 2019 to less than 5 days in 2021. If a COVID outbreak, a natural disaster, or political instability disrupts a foreign semiconductor facility for even just a few weeks, it has the potential to shut down a manufacturing facility in the U.S., putting American workers and their families at risk.
At this point, computer chips used to produce automobiles and medical devices are, particularly in short supply.
In our burg this is a fairly regular occurrence. Electricity and water normally off about 3 x per month.
We are so used to it that we handle it in our stride, however, when they forewarn us that the Electricity or water is going to be off then I normally stuff up. Like 2 weeks ago they warned that the electricity will be off for a day and I ran my batteries to 30% the morning of the shut, and to make matters worse, it was an overcast day with very little pv power.
Or like last week they warned that the water would be off for 2 days, so I made sure both JoJo tanks are full, but I left the mains bypass valve open (which is before my non-return valve, and promptly pumped both tanks empty…Ended up having to buy borehole water for ZAR 0.30 / l.
Yeah, I had a similar lapse of judgement last night. Weather report said rain for today. So ordinarily that means keep the batteries above 60%. I forgot. Batteries at 40% this morning, very little sun, and load-shedding at 12PM. So now we have to charge from the grid…
