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Power crisis "national emergency": SA govt Posted: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 [miningmx.com] -- 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, the country’s government said today in a statement. At a press briefing this morning Minister of Public Enterprises, Alec Erwin apologised for the “unprecedented and unplanned” outages on South African 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. 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 15% and 20% of current electricity consumption across the system. A quota system will be one of the “quick hit” ways of achieving this. Exactly what the quota system will be or how it will be implemented is not yet clear, although mining companies, among other ‘key industrial consumers’, have been asked to stop operating activities immediately for an indefinite period. Erwin said, however, that negotiations between big consumers are underway and details will be announced once agreed to. There are also no clear details about how much the price of electricity will go up by. But, 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 intervention measures that seek to influence consumer behaviour in the medium to long term include 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. Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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