Some examples of maintained emergency lights on Livecopper include:

Emergency Bulbs

Emergency Light Bulbs work similar to maintained emergency light fittings. They look identical to a typical light bulb that you would put in a light fitting. Emergency Light bulbs have a small battery inside of them which enables the bulb to work during a power failure. Typically, emergency bulbs will emit a warm white or day light colour. During a power failure the light bulb automatically changes over to a smaller LED configuration which emits less light. The emergency LED configuration is usually a cool white colour. Often the light that these bulbs emit during load shedding or a power failure is similar to that of a camping lantern. The advantage, however, is that the bulb is in the room's central light fixture so you'll immediately have light as soon as the power goes off.

Additionally, these bulbs can detect when the light switch has been switched off. This means that if you turn the light switch off, even during a power failure or load shedding - the light bulb will power off.

Emergency Light Bulbs typically come with a few options:

• E27 or B22 lamp holder
• 3 or 6 hour Battery (This is most common but not always the case)
• Warm White or Cool White

Pros

• Affordable (Most emergency bulbs are between R80 - R150)
• Instantly turns on during a power failure
• You can use your light switch to opperate the bulb, even during a power failure

Cons

• Emergency light is not very bright (About the same as a camping lantern)
• Sometimes you can't switch them off, if your light switch is old or poorly installed. 

Gas Geysers

In most cases the water in your geyser will still be hot near the end of load shedding. It is possible, however, that if you're on a geyser timer that you'll have load shedding right when the geyser is meant to be warming up your bath water.

I had a friend who paid his electricity bill diligently every month. The one month there was a mix up with the municipality which lead to the municipality disconnecting his power. To make things worse, his power was disconnected on a Friday and the problem could only be resolved by going into the municiple offices. Due to this unfortunate incident my friend was left without power for the entire weekend. This could happen to anyone. In some cases it could be longer than just a weekend.

To combat this something you can consider is installing a Gas Geyser. Gas Geysers are something that we have written about extensively on the Livecopper Knowledge Base Blog. Gas Geysers use gas to rapidly heat water on demand. This means that gas is only consumed when water is running through the pipe. You can find out more about everything you should consider before buying a gas geyser here.

Pros and Cons of a Gas Geyser
Pros:

• Doesn't require electricity to operate, meaning you can still have a hot shower regardless of power failures.
• Can sometimes be cheaper than using an electric geyser.
• Heats water on demand

Cons:

• Costly upfront cost, especially for installations that require a larger gas geyser or multiple gas geysers. Find out more here.
• Need to buy new gas.
• Require certified Gas Installer to install. 

Thank you for reading our load shedding master guide. If there is something we can add, be sure to let us know in the comments below. We'd love to hear your tried and tested Load Shedding tricks. 

If you would like to find out more about any one of the techniques or products in this blog, or you are unsure about something, you can contact our team of experts here.