AN electronics air conditioning control systems engineer, who lives in Durban North, said the power outages in the area were affecting businesses negatively.

Johann Van Den Berg, who has been in the controls industry for 40 years, provides shopping centres, hospital wards, operating theatres, and other major buildings, with controlled airconditioning systems.

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The system involves temperature and humidity sensors that can be adjusted remotely via the building manager’s PC or internet access.
“Maintenance managers are able to monitor and control complete buildings from a central computer. Imagine having to physically go to more than 450 different stores or rooms to do this,” he said.

The systems monitor and control peak load conditions of shopping centres, reducing power load during costly high peak charges. Load shedding prevents buildings from reducing power and energy costs spike up as cooling needs to run during peak power periods.
Van Den Berg is able to access these systems from his business, should the client request it.

“My own 40-year-old business was looted and burnt during the unrest, so I now have to work from home as the building has to be rebuilt. I installed an invertor in my home, so we still have lights throughout the house and my business can still operate when the power is out. If I hadn’t done this, it would mean systems crashing and my company would be unable to monitor the systems of clients. I recommend that each home and business in the area installs an invertor to prevent power surges and, subsequently, damage to equipment. Some businesses take up to two hours post load shedding to start operating again as equipment needs to be restarted. This is a huge loss of revenue,” he added.

Van Den Berg urges the community to report matters of transformer vandalism, and vandalism of other municipal property, to the authorities.