In yet another incident of electricity variations interfering with farm equipment, Dudley Anderson told News24 that one of his chicken houses at his farm in Fort Nottingham lost ventilation in mid-December, with the electricity also knocking out his alert system.
"It's just like a perfect storm," he said."I do have generators, I do have backups, I have everything in place."The farm equipment, however, wasn't designed for constant switching on and off, nor for variations in electricity, he said. Eskom allowed for a variation in voltage of 5%, he said, but this week he had measured his voltage went from 410 volts to 350 volts.
"The equipment is not designed for that, we can't see what's going to happen until its happened," he said. Anderson said he had spent significantly on a box that equalises the electricity phases, but he simply couldn't afford, at this point, to go completely off grid. "I'm using 2 000 litres [of diesel] a month to run my generator, when that should [normally] last me six months. Financially, it becomes a bit of a burden," he said.