Missive from the Congo 012

Originally posted on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 07:41:21 +0200

This week's topic is electricity. It is something we generally take for granted. Usually there's plenty to go around. Occasionally there is a blackout but it is usually short-lived. Electricity here is another story. There is a power generating facility on the Tschopo River but the generators are over forty years old. Needless to say they require a great deal of TLC to keep them running. That is not always enough. There have been numerous instances of blackouts though it has pretty steady lately.

Canada House electical panel

The real trick is in managing the power. Power here is three-phase power. I’m not sure exactly what it means but for more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power. Apparently power in North America is transmitted this way but transformers convert the power to a single phase at 110 volts. Domestic power here is 220 volts and all three phases come to the main panel. We then manually select the phase that provides the best power.

This usually means the most power but not always. We frequently have brownouts where the voltage is very low; sometimes 112 volts instead of 220 volts. Needless to say not much works with only half of the necessary voltage. However the real problems happen when we get too much voltage. We have burned out circuits and appliances because of too much voltage. We use voltage regulators which display the input and output voltages, which is how I know what quality power we are getting. But sometimes there is too much power for the regulators and we have burned one of those.

The other major issue we have with power here is people tampering with the central electrical junction boxes. Most of the electrical cables here are buried. The lines to the various houses go to central boxes that receive power from the city grid. People here routinely open these boxes and make changes to "solve" their electrical problems. They also routinely take the wires from one house to connect another, and so on. It's got to be damn dangerous but as far as I know, no one had died because of it since I arrived. There is just such a box in front of our property and I am convinced that at least some of our electrical problems are related to this tampering. For this reason, aerial power lines are the "modern" solution. Since the wires are out of reach, people don't mess with them.

Utility junction box in front of Canada House

To deal with these issues we have a generator, which we use when there is no or too little power. We use it sparingly both because of the noise but also because gas is quite expensive.

The other thing that is happening relatively frequently around here is the theft of electrical cabling. I'm not talking a few yards here or there but kilometres of it. And I don't mean spools of it stored in a warehouse somewhere. No, thieves have been digging it out of the ground for kilometres. How they manage without someone noticing and telling the authorities is beyond me. I assume it's a combination of fear and corruption but who knows. I gather the copper is quite valuable these days.

Just one more part of the experience.

Have a good week.

John