As someone who works from home, I’ve lost two days of productivity over the past week. Like many small businesses, that means a serious drop in income. My stress levels are soaring because when the cuts come I do not know if they will be for a couple of hours or the whole day.
The tipping point came on Tuesday night when the lights went out and I discovered that my children, who were now terrified, had broken all our torches and I had no idea where I had left the matches.
It is time to take this whole blackout issue a bit more seriously. There are many solutions, depending on how much you want to spend and what your needs are.
First, I can use my car as a source of power. According to Steve Parry, of a company called Plan My Power, for R450 you can purchase an inverter which converts battery power to electrical power. This runs off your car battery and will power a 54cm TV, a few household lights, a laptop and a cellphone charger. The inverter connects directly to your car battery and an extension cord with a multiplug is run into your home. It will reduce the longevity of your battery and uses petrol, but is certainly an inexpensive and quick solution.
Personally, I will probably opt for the R300 inverter which plugs into the cigarette lighter and which could run a laptop and charge a cellphone. This will allow me to charge my laptop and cellphone between meetings.
When it comes to powering up my office, a traditional UPS (uninterrupted power supply) is not an option. For about R1 800 it would give my desktop computer about 20 minutes of battery life to save my work, but I need more power than this.
Parry says for R7 600 you can purchase an inverter with batteries providing about three hours of power for four lights, a desktop computer and a laptop. It would cost about R1 360 to purchase batteries for an additional three hours of power.
However I would rather upgrade my laptop for this amount and move away from my desktop computer. A good laptop would provide the same amount of battery power and I could charge it in my car or take it to a coffee shop and work from there.
The most popular solution, says Parry, particularly for small businesses and households, is larger units costing between R20 000 and R40 000. A R20 000 unit would provide four to five hours of power for lights, TV, computer, laptop, intermittent use of an oven and microwave and a fridge.
If you are going this route you may as well hook it up to your electrical board rather than running extension cords, although this would entail the additional cost of a qualified electrician.
I am definitely considering the purchase of a solar geyser. Not only will it ensure hot water for R15 000, it will pay for itself in two to three years as geysers make up 40% of electricity bills. But purchasing solar panels to run an entire home is astronomically expensive, about R150 000, and there is not a good return on the investment.
How to make it through a blackout
Laptops are the only way to go now, says Toby Shapshak, editor of tech magazine Stuff. Keep it plugged in so that when the power goes you have a full battery. But any gadgets attached to your laptop, such as a modem, drain your battery, so keep their use limited during a power outage.
He also recommends modems that plug into the USB port or PC card slot on your laptop. Your ADSL lines or even wireless connectivity, which require a router in your home, will be useless during a blackout.
Synchronise your cellphone to your computer so that your diary and contacts are updated and buy an extra battery for your cellphone
Go back to being a Luddite and print hard copies of your contact lists from your computer and print out your electronic diary every morning
Cordless phones need electricity to work so if you use one keep a spare normal handset on standby.
Home survival
It is time to bring the camping equipment out of storage.
Your Cadac gas cooker should take prime place in your kitchen. In addition to gas stoves, one can use ethanol gel stoves. Shoprite Checkers sells ethanol gel for about R6,99 / 750ml bottle. For a longer term solution consider changing your stove to gas.
Buy a couple of neon camping lights and keep them fully charged.
Have a “blackout” box or two strategically placed in your home with candles (citronella for the mosquitoes), matches and a torch, which should preferably be a head torch to keep your hands free.
Special plugs with LED lights for night lights and emergency lighting are available from larger hardware stores. These units are charged in the socket, but have space for another plug to fit in to the unit, so that the plug socket is not wasted. The unit lights up on its own in the case of a power failure, if set to the emergency lighting mode, and acts as a torch and nightlight if set to nightlight. It switches off automatically as it has as a daylight sensor as well.
Get a chest freezer. It keeps items frozen for a day and keeping it full helps it stay cold.
Buy a closed combustion wood fire for heat and warmth, preferably one that can accommodate a pot of water on top.
Ensure alarms, gates, garage doors and other devices have a decent battery back up. — Maya Fisher-French