Load Information
What is Load Management?Electricity networks, much like roads, experience periods when there can be significant congestion. At these times capacity on the network is fully utilised. This typically occurs on cold winter mornings when residential water heating load coincides with the start of the business day, and again in the evening when people return from work and switch on heating, lighting and begin cooking the evening meal. In addition, we experience peaks on our rural network when irrigation pumps connected to our network are switched on to water crops and fields. These peaks where our capacity is fully utilised are generally for very short periods. Rather than investing significant sums of money to increase the capacity of the electricity network for these short periods, which would ultimately increase line charges, we use Load Management. To manage load we use a ripple signalling system that allows us to switch off appliances (typically hot water cylinders) to help reduce the total load on the network - this is recorded as our shedding percentage. As soon as load levels begin to fall we systematically begin to switch these appliances back on. A shedding percentage of 0% indicates that we are not shedding (or reducing) any load from the network, whereas a figure of 100% indicates that we are shedding all controllable load. We always aim to load manage for the shortest time possible to ensure that consumers are not significantly affected. For more information about Load Management please contact Electricity Ashburton.
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