Keep The Lights On

Keep The Lights On by Christina Engela - a guide to keeping your house lights on during power outages. This guide sets out a simple, cheap way to set up your own home UPS system without burning out your bank card in the process and discusses cheap, simple alternatives with helpful tips, diagrams, illustrations and advice from the author's personal experience. "The last time I considered buying an off-the-shelf home UPS unit - right in the middle of the latest round of 'load-shedding' – just the inverter and battery charger alone without deep cycle batteries, plugs, leads, cut-over switches or any other accessories – it cost over R10, 000.00! At that time, generators were completely out of stock everywhere in South Africa due to high demand, and prices were escalating weekly. The negatives of Crapitalism aside, with rolling black-outs (aka 'load shedding') crippling South Africa in 2012 and 13, and most recently in 2015 and 16, 17, late 18 – AND even into early 2019, most South Africans suffered a total cumulative time of one day (or more) per week without electric power! Even with power issues allegedly having been largely resolved (miraculously by squeezing more money out of increasingly struggling poor South Africans) we are still being forced to rely on a monopolized, unscrupulous and dishonest government-owned power company for the most expensive electricity supply on the planet! I decided to do something about it – I wanted to be as independent as possible for my electricity needs! Four years after I first wrote this guide, my humble home-made UPS system is there as a back-up, ready and waiting for when I need it. This guide will explain in simple term what I did, and how I built my own UPS system at home – to become more self-sufficient – at least to the point where I have lights and basic appliances during those hours when 'load-shedding' comes back, or for those emergency blackouts!" - Christina Engela