|
'Quick hit' power plan for SA
25/01/2008 11:14 - (SA)
Troye Lund
Cape Town - South Africa's power outages are a national emergency that must be treated with urgent action, which include a hike in electricity prices, mandatory quotas as well as a penalty and incentive system, says the government.
At a press briefing this morning Minister of Public Enterprises, Alec Erwin apologised for the "unprecedented and unplanned" outages on President Thabo Mbeki's behalf saying that, when it came to making timeous plans to expand supply to cope with increased electricity demand, "government got it wrong".
But, Erwin emphasised that the current emergency situation would be dealt with in a manner that would not have an adverse impact on investment flow and economic growth.
"There's no question of stopping contracted projects or freezing any new projects," said Erwin.
If anything, he is confident that plans to step up the build programme is good news for growth and job creation.
The government also emphasised that it will not be cutting power supply to other countries in order to improve South Africa's supply.
The immediate priority to implement a "quick hit" power conservation programme to reduce, and depending on its success, negate the need for load shedding. Eskom is looking for a total reduction of between 15% and 20% of current electricity consumption across the system. A quota system will be one of the "quick hit" ways of achieving this.
Government would implement an electricity rationing programme as a "quick hit" solution to address the current power blackouts, said Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.
"We have discussed how quotas will be allocated, who will be exempt from the programme, what incentives and penalties will be in place, when it will start and what legislative enablers we need to have in place for the programme to work," Sonjica said.
A concept proposal submitted to cabinet includes quota allocations for various electricity users, penalties and cut-offs, quota trading and flexibility, reports Sapa.
The programme is designed to achieve the overall savings target of between 10% and 15% over time.
To have an immediate saving of 8%, industrial users would have to use 10% less, commercial users 15%, hotels, resorts shopping malls and conference centres 20% less, large office buildings, government and municipalities 15% less, agriculture 5% less, and residences 10% less.
Penalties would be given for electricity use above the allocated quota and electricity supply to repeat offenders would be cut off.
There are no clear details about how much the price of electricity will go up by. But, the government is sure of one thing. A price hike, coupled with an incentive and penalty system, won't be temporary.
"We have to develop an economy that is much more energy efficient," said Erwin.
Other interventions that seek to change consumer behaviour include efficient lighting roll out;
Other intervention measures that seek to influence consumer behaviour in the medium to long term are the following: Replacing incandescent lighting with CFLs, which could save about 800MW and also restricting the manufacturing on incandescent bulbs.
A solar water-heating programme is intended to install 1 million solar water heaters over the next three years. The current cost of the solar heater is prohibitive (it is estimated to cost between R7 000 and R20 000).
"It is also reported that the South African manufacturing capacity is only 10 000 units per annum. To eliminate these barriers, there is a subsidy of 20% - 30% depending on the cost of the unit. The potential savings of this programme is 650 MW. The programme is targeting both the households, group houses (e.g. army bases, mine residences), commercial and industrial applications," said Minister of Minerals of Energy Buyelwa Sonjica.
Eskom will also manage residential consumption with new wireless technologies.
The government's cost benefit analysis indicates that an improved communication between the utility and the customer meter will result in big energy savings during the peak demand. This is illustrated by the figures below.
The potential reduction is estimated to be 3 265 MW, made up of:
- Geyser = 2 161 MW
- Laundry (2% contribution to peak) = 246 MW
- Pool pumps (1% contribution to peak) = 122 MW
- Other appliances (6% contribution to peak) = 736 MW
A programme to get households to switch to LP gas will also be started with the view of saving a further 500MW. All public lighting, including traffic lights, will be converted to solar power at a projected cost of R400m. The hospitality industry will be required to convert all water heating to solar power.
Erwin stressed that if citizens and business do not co-operate in reducing demand, the government would get tougher: "It's clear that we are running our power system at utilisation levels that are overstretching maintenance and if we do not stabilise this we could drive our systems into higher levels of stress - this we cannot do!"
|
News
