Ours is a coal culture. We have an abundance of the stuff, enough to make tons of electricity and supply a big chunk of our fuel needs as well.
Our electricity is among the cheapest anywhere costing, say, just 20% of what they pay in Europe.
So cheap that it has been used as an investment tool. Come here for cheap electricity, investors are told. You can import your raw material, whack vast amounts of electricity at it, and export it with very little value being extracted by the domestic economy. This, observers have noted, is like exporting electricity.
Coal, coupled with dramatic over-investment in power stations before democracy, meant that the new government inherited significant spare power-generating capacity.
A cornerstone of post-apartheid delivery became mass electrification programmes. Houses were built in their hundreds of thousands. And electrified.
Past over-investment has given us cheap electricity. If an abundance of coal was not enough of an incentive to Eskom, it was also exempt from paying tax until recent times.
The cheap-power party was not going to last forever, though, and a bolt which found its way into the nuclear plant at Koeberg near Cape Town earlier this year, turned out to be the party pooper.
Suddenly Cape Town had no power for days. Sustained economic growth and inadequate planning had caused the country to run out of power. And winter was approaching.
We have already had strategies in place for some years to manage electricity demand. Electricity users pay 1c a kilowatt — about R400million a year — to a dedicated fund that aims, in particular, to manage peak demand. A chunk of this money has been used to enable electricity suppliers to switch off your geyser to ease their peak supply requirements. Money has also been spent on educational and pilot projects using renewable technologies.
But demand supply management (DSM), as it is called, moved into high gear this year after the blackouts in the Western Cape. Tens of thousands of low-wattage light bulbs have been handed out, free blankets are available for geysers and there has been the encouragement of a mass basis for low-income households to switch to using liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
It appears all of a sudden that LPG may be the better option for these households, rather than electricity, and there are warnings from Eskom that electricity prices may be raised between the crucial, high-usage, 6pm-to-8pm period.
Higher electricity prices coupled with relatively low, regulated gas prices are being seen as a key part of the solution to the country’s sudden energy crisis. The government plans no less than encouraging every household to switch to LPG for cooking and heating, building a massive new gas import infrastructure and using a new muscled version of the state-owned PetroSA to manage large-scale imports from countries such as Algeria.
Eskom is embracing gas with enthusiasm, its demand management people saying gas provision costs Eskom just R1,5million per megawatt to supply versus R10million per megawatt if a new power station is to be built.
Solar water heating is conspicuous by its absence. Residential electricity use makes up 35% of peak demand, with water heating contributing a significant proportion of this.
Solar power, being a renewable energy source, is environmentally benign and can be a large creator of jobs in manufacturing, assembly, installation and servicing.
The technology needs financial support for it to be implemented on a wide scale as it is not cost competitive with existing electricity tariffs, those based on power stations which were built many years ago.
Solar power, though, is more cost competitive when compared with estimates of new electricity provision.
Environmentalists and solar power supporters argue that DSM funds should be, in part, made available to support what can become a major, vibrant industry.
Consumers, particularly those in the Western Cape, are understood to be rushing to buy solar systems, leading to supply shortfalls.
But financial support, solar supporters say, will bring more certainty to the industry as well as more investment (and jobs).
“South Africa has the best solar regime in the world,” says Helene Rask Gron, who has researched solar water heating over a four-year period for the Department of Minerals and Energy on a grant from the Danish government.
“One of the few solutions, which unlocks economic value by reducing electricity demand while maintaining economic comfort levels, is the rapid deployment of domestic Solar Water Heaters (SWHs).”
Gron says notwithstanding South Africa’s abundant sunshine, it has been an uphill battle to convince the authorities here that solar water heating should be part of a modern set of energy solutions.
A position paper on the website of the National Energy Regulator discusses DSM interchangeably with energy efficiency.
Solar water heating would undoubtedly contribute to energy efficiency. Countries such as Greece have developed successful solar water heating programmes using financial incentives.
In the absence of national leadership on solar water power, the leadership has fallen to Cape Town, acting on bitter experience, which is developing by-laws which will require, for instance, that all new buildings install solar water heaters.
Government supports solar water heating as a policy imperative, even while offering no leadership on the issue. Says Gron in a paper on solar water heaters: “The adoption of solar water heating fits the renewable energy strategy outlined in the White Paper on Renewable Energy that has set a target of 10 000 gigawatts for renewable energy to be achieved by 2013.
“To ensure that this target can and will be met, the Department of Minerals and Energy has drafted a strategy for grid-connected renewable energy. This strategy includes an estimate that approximately 23% of the overall renewable energy target will be met by SWHs.”
Gron says using DSM finance for SWHs makes sense from a short and a long-term perspective.
“The application should be seen in the context of the overall DSM programme, which is to level the load and reduce the need for building new power stations. The introduction of SWHs, combined with ripple control capability, will ensure that the peak load in the Western Cape is permanently reduced, while contributing to significant energy savings through a reliable renewable energy technology.
“This means that the coal-based electricity will be replaced by clean energy, which brings with it considerable environmental benefits.”
Environmentalists and experts canvassed on the subject, though, say you can hardly expect Eskom, which still has the primary job of selling electricity, to actively campaign for solar rather than fossil power. The poacher cannot also be gamekeeper.
There is a glimmer of hope, though, for the sun in this battle with coal. Since May a new body, the National Energy Efficiency Agency, has been set up at the Central Energy Fund, which now includes a number of alternative energy initiatives within its ambit.
The NEEA will oversee the implementation of DSM and energy efficiency projects currently undertaken by Eskom and other entities.
Barry Bredenkamp has been seconded from Eskom to head up this agency. “The DSM funds, however, will in the interim remain with Eskom as the main implementing agency who will continue ton manage these funds with the oversight of the NEEA’s governing body,” says a CEF press release.
In the meantime, ignore the sun. Think coal.