How does Load Shedding effect your alarm?  A simple explanation and some solutions from Star Alarms .

Load shedding outages have the following effects on your alarm:

When the power goes out, your alarm contacts the STAR Alarms control centre notifying us that your alarm has lost its electrical power. Your alarm is then powered by the alarm battery for the duration of the power outage. Alarm batteries are not built to handle such frequent, long periods of dependency. They are recharged when the power is reinstated but they eventually become ‘spongy’ and can cause problems such as false alarms, alarm system inefficiencies or even a lack of power to your alarm system.Spongy batteries need to be replaced.  If you suspect that your battery has become ‘spongy’ due to irregularities with your alarm system, a replacement battery is required.  Star ALARMS can replace your battery at a cost of R750 including call out or can supply you one on a DIY basis for R325.If you are not sure if your battery is faulty we recommend, due to the excessive load shedding, that if your battery is older than a year you should consider replacing it.

Load shedding outages have the following effects on STAR Alarm’s Control Centre:

All the alarms we are monitoring in the area that load shedding is occurring attempt to call the Control Centre at same time to notify us that there is a power outage at your residence or business. False alarms are rife as a result of ‘spongy’ batteries (explained above). When the power is reinstated in the area that load shedding occurs, all the alarms we are monitoring attempt to again call the Control Centre all at once to notify us that power has been restored.

This results in a very serious congestion of calls coming through all at the same time and we are concerned that among these calls there are emergency calls that pertain to actual burglary or panic situations. To combat this concern, we have installed state-of-the-art software that differentiates between the calls. Calls are automatically prioritised with the PANIC signal being attended to first, BURGLARY signal second and POWER FAILURE 3rd. This has definitely helped the situation considerably, however, false alarms during power outages are still excessive and we are still concerned that real situations may not be attended to with the speed necessary.

Solutions for our clients:

Replace your alarm battery if it is older than a year to ensure minimal false alarm signals. Look at investing in a small UPS (unlimited power supply system) for your Alarm system during load shedding outages.

PANIC SITUATIONS DURING LOAD SHEDDING:

 Push the panic button AND if possible call us on 021 55 66 911 so that we may attend to your needs first and foremost.