Power outages

[Jaco De Jongh]

5 hours ago, Richard Mackay said:

and we will see this will influence the grid in the 'energy mix' going forward. I don't believe we will see one system dominating since it won't be the ideal solution for all applications.

I guess, I am still missing the elephant then...

[Richard Mackay]

2 hours ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

I guess, I am still missing the elephant then...

It's happening already. Years ago all mains powered equipment that was powered from a plug point had it's power supplies built into the unit.

Now we see external power adapters and power supplies. This might be commercially driven since the manufacturers want to build one product for world markets and not different models for different countries. But whatever the reason the PSUs are now made by specialist companies and are not specifically for a particular device. This development now produces zillions of power adapters to be made with a specific voltage (typically 12V) and connectors (typically 5.5 x 2.1mm)

This isn't a standard (as far as I'm aware) but the regulators will want to standardise this development to improve efficiencies like they did when they got the mobile phone industry to standardise on power connectors for their phones (Except for Apple)

 

 

[Richard Mackay]

Here's (another) example of this elephant in the room...

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/wits-engineers-have-built-an-affordable-off-the-grid-system-and-they-want-it-to-power-whole-villages-2019-12