AUW 2015 (Africa Utility Week) 12-15 May 2015

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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 shared meeting area (see below). 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.  Set-up was on Monday 11th, the conference and exhibition were Tuesday to Thursday.  Then on Friday we did some arranged trips to interesting "power or clean energy" projects.

Power to dwellings comes from here
(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 use to charge them an un-verified amount for electricity that was fed from the main dwelling.

Pay-As-You-Go meters mounted out of reach up the pole, a separate meter for main dwelling and each backyarder dwelling.

Typical setup - one pole out side two main dwellings - feeding main dwelling and maximum of three backyarder shacks per main 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 back-up generators and controls such that load-shedding would not effect the lighting and media transmission during world-wide broadcast of hosted events.

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