On Wednesday morning I got a call at 10:01am. It took me a moment to understand the voice on the other end of the line. It was one of my co-workers and he was saying something about the lift. And then I knew what the problem is. Most mornings, the power in our office goes off at the stroke of 10:00am. That means that if you arrive at 9:59am and climb in the elevator, it just might get switched off while you're between floors. I ran down to tell the security guard that someone was in the elevator and he hurried to turn on the building generator. Two minutes later, my co-worker was in the office.
Load shedding are planned power cuts to manage electricity demand. For most of the city, power is cut for four one-hour blocks during the day (at our office, we usually lose power from 6-7am, 10-11am, 2-3pm and 6-7pm, but different parts of the city are on different schedules). Since the building staff doesn't like to use the generator during the day, that means that we don't have power for two hours of the workday. Fortunately, the office has a UPS which serves as a power backup (check it out on wikipedia), so that runs the wireless router and we stay connected to the internet during that time. In general, we just need to make sure that we have our laptops charged before the power cuts out. It can be a little uncomfortable without the fan on, but other than that, I barely notice the cuts. Unless, that is, I'm still at the office for the 6pm power cut, since it's usually pretty dark by 6:30, sometimes we use a solar lamp to light the office.
At home, we have an even fancier set up. My roommate bought a battery system and an inverter which runs the low-power outlets at our house (the battery charges during the times when the power is on). So, the washing machine, refrigerator, microwave and electric cooker don't work when the power is out, but we can run lights [1] and fans, charge computers and phones, and use the wireless. Still, this ends up being a bit of a hassle, since the power is out from 7-8pm, which means that if I'm cooking dinner, I need to either finish by 7:00 or start after 8:00. I like having the electric cooker, but gas would probably better since it's not reliant on electricity. Still, this is much nicer than the 8-12 hour power cuts I used to deal with in Tanzania (those were the scheduled ones--sometimes it stayed off for more than a day). And to date, I have successfully avoided getting trapped in the elevator at our office. ::Knock on wood::
[1] Still, I am a little concerned about draining the battery system before the power comes back, so I've switched most of the light bulbs in our house to LED bulbs. It's better for the planet anyway.
Load shedding are planned power cuts to manage electricity demand. For most of the city, power is cut for four one-hour blocks during the day (at our office, we usually lose power from 6-7am, 10-11am, 2-3pm and 6-7pm, but different parts of the city are on different schedules). Since the building staff doesn't like to use the generator during the day, that means that we don't have power for two hours of the workday. Fortunately, the office has a UPS which serves as a power backup (check it out on wikipedia), so that runs the wireless router and we stay connected to the internet during that time. In general, we just need to make sure that we have our laptops charged before the power cuts out. It can be a little uncomfortable without the fan on, but other than that, I barely notice the cuts. Unless, that is, I'm still at the office for the 6pm power cut, since it's usually pretty dark by 6:30, sometimes we use a solar lamp to light the office.
At home, we have an even fancier set up. My roommate bought a battery system and an inverter which runs the low-power outlets at our house (the battery charges during the times when the power is on). So, the washing machine, refrigerator, microwave and electric cooker don't work when the power is out, but we can run lights [1] and fans, charge computers and phones, and use the wireless. Still, this ends up being a bit of a hassle, since the power is out from 7-8pm, which means that if I'm cooking dinner, I need to either finish by 7:00 or start after 8:00. I like having the electric cooker, but gas would probably better since it's not reliant on electricity. Still, this is much nicer than the 8-12 hour power cuts I used to deal with in Tanzania (those were the scheduled ones--sometimes it stayed off for more than a day). And to date, I have successfully avoided getting trapped in the elevator at our office. ::Knock on wood::
[1] Still, I am a little concerned about draining the battery system before the power comes back, so I've switched most of the light bulbs in our house to LED bulbs. It's better for the planet anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment