This year IDX took part at AUW 2015 at the Convention Centre in Cape Town. We were part of a group of emerging export companies that belong to the SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTROTECHNICAL EXPORT COUNCIL and had a stand plus access to a shared meeting area.
Our stand was very simple but after doing AAF 2015 at the Dome in Johannesburg the previous week it was a pleasure to not have lots of equipment to handle. The set-up was on Monday 11th, and the conference and exhibition were from Tuesday to Thursday. Then on Friday, we did some arranged trips to interesting “power or clean energy” projects.
(a) The “backyarder” project – visited an area where municipal houses are rented and there are 1 to 3 shacks in the backyard with each having an independent pay-as-you-go single-phase electricity supply. The meter is mounted on a pole outside the property and the backyarder tenant just has a keypad to enter his electricity voucher details. This project is designed to protect “backyarders” from being exploited by municipal house tenants who used to charge them an unverified amount for electricity that was fed from the main dwelling.
Power to dwellings come from here
Typical setup – one pole outside two main dwellings – feeding the main dwelling and a maximum of three backyarder shacks per main dwelling.
Pay-As-You-Go meters mounted out of reach up the pole, a separate meter for the main dwelling and each backyarder dwelling.
(b) Then on to the Cape Town Electricity Control Centre where power usage is monitored and where scheduled or emergency load-shedding is initiated. Cape Town has both pump-storage and gas-turbine reserve power so is reasonably well equipped to cope with variable demand. As it is a National Key Point we were not allowed to take any pictures.
(c) A visit to the World Cup football stadium to see their power reticulation set-up. It was very impressive to see the backup generators and controls such that load-shedding would not affect the lighting and media transmission during worldwide broadcasts of hosted events.
