As has become pretty clear, Eskom is not going to be out of the “load shedding woods” any time soon – in fact it’s predicted that the winter ahead could be our most severe load shedding period yet.
By Guy Whitcroft
Before last year, the impact on office workers was mitigated by most offices having installed generators and/or other devices to ensure continuity when the power went off, but as we all know, the working environment changed and work from home (WFH) became the new buzzword.
This brought its own set of problems for companies – and opportunities for the reseller community – and I know a number of companies that ended up having a bumper year through sales of new notebooks, monitors, printers and other devices to facilitate this very swift change.
However, speaking with people who are working from home, one thing that seems to have been under-catered for is load shedding and, with the forecasts for this winter, this is something that urgently needs attention: opportunity indeed.
For some houses, moving off-grid makes sense, but it is still expensive and outside the budget for most. So how do we ensure we can work effectively regardless of what Eskom throws at us?
Generators are noisy and expensive to run, while a solar (or wind) power system is expensive to maintain, and all require an electrician to do extensive work on your circuitry if the cut-over is to be seamless. So, essentially, it will normally boil down to a choice between a UPS and an inverter with batteries.
A UPS can provide a fairly inexpensive solution for low-power devices, but needs to be configured with plenty of spare capacity (I like to have at least twice the anticipated power draw for a three-hour period of load shedding, and preferably more) so I find them best for your router as this is often a good distance from your place of work.
Laptops too, of course, have reasonable battery life and can operate off a charged battery for the load shedding period in most cases. However, if – like me – you prefer a large external monitor, have some external storage and, perhaps, even a WiFi access point near your workspace, you will need power there. In such cases, I prefer an inverter with plenty of deep-cycle battery storage – again, at least twice your maximum likely power draw over three hours (this assumes a nominal two-hour load shedding time, with delays in restoring the power).
The reason for the extra capacity for UPS and inverter systems is simply that batteries don’t like being discharged frequently and certainly not below 50% (30% to 40% is preferable if this is to be repeated often). When subjected to frequent greater discharge cycles, they will quickly lose the ability to be fully-charged and need replacement.
One word of warning here – don’t attach a laser printer to a UPS or inverter system: they draw too much power when cycling up. So, either go without printing in load shedding periods or use a different technology.
Resellers addressing this market, therefore, have a great opportunity ahead of them – to advise, size and supply appropriate systems for the huge numbers of people that will be working from home over winter.
Dark days for some, but bright days of opportunity for others.