Opening an Isolator On Load

You have got to love electricity. It’s there… but you can’t see it, hear it or smell it. You can feel it… oh yes.

But then, sometimes, something happens that allow us to “see” electricity. This is an oldie but a goody.

And that, my friends, is electricity!

What happens is that, when the isolator opens the electricity attempts to continue flowing. That causes the arc to start. When the arc develops the air is ionised making the flow of electricity through the air easier. That is why the arc keeps on going even after the isolator is fully open!

Decrease in Energy Demand

I subscribed to Sharenet’s (www.sharenet.co.za) load shedding alerts. Worked like a charm, especially during the high load shedding periods. This morning I received this mail from them (all credit where credit is due etc…) Interesting reading.

“There has been no load-shedding for several months now, and ESKOM have informed they do not expect any load-shedding to occur in 2016. This is the good news and for once, we agree with ESKOM that load-shedding probabilities are low next year.

Now for the bad news – the low probability of load-shedding in 2016 and beyond is not solely due to ESKOM getting its act together with its maintenance program and horrific building delays. It’s mostly due to a massive fall-off in DEMAND caused by the shutdown in factories and mines and other energy intensive industries, as well as a slumping SA ECONOMY.

The pullback in demand is horrific.

So despite improved and accelerated maintenance (we fully accept the great job being done by ESKOM new management here), demand continues to trend downward, now down almost 8% since the Jul 2007 peak at the height of the last economic expansion.

This is bad news because this means the economy is contracting and if this continues long enough, we will be plunged into another recession. A recession will likely affect your business or employer and it will definately affect the Rand/$ which in turn will drive up costs of imported goods. Falling earnings will affect JSE shares that are heavily exposed to the SA economy, but fortunately there are many listed shares on the JSE that are immune to the local economy and actually gain in value when the Rand falls.”

To Print or not to Print… that is the question

We have all seen the little note at the bottom of most e-mails. “Consider the environment before printing” or something along that line. Now here is the question… What do you intend doing with that e-mail. Just a quick read and delete? By all means, go ahead.

But are you going to archive or save it for later reading or reference? You may want to re-think your position then.

Granted that printing an e-mail is mostly a waste of paper, it should be noted that if the paper is from a sustainable source, there may actually be merit in doing that.

Consider, if you will, the storage of said e-mail on a server of some sort. The server requires power. Power (especially in South Africa) is far from a clean resource. Not to mention the building required to house the server, the HVAC required to cool the server and a myriad other silicone based components required to actually save the data. Putting all of this together, saving the e-mail might actually be worse for the environment than printing it.

That said, most companies these days have a backup of all mail somewhere in cyberspace. Printing the e-mail may then actually be a terrible thing. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Solutions?

I am sure somebody is just waiting to revolutionise the soft- vs hard-copy arena. I cannot wait.