/ 1 November 2007

Doubts surface over Eskom’s geyser campaign

A Mail & Guardian Online reader, Simon van Gend from Cape Town, ran into trouble with his geyser last week after he followed national electricity supplier Eskom’s advice to switch his geyser off each day, to help save electricity and prevent load shedding.

“I got into the spirit of helping Eskom by switching off my geyser for a few hours every day and that resulted in the breaking of my fairly new thermostat,” he wrote in a letter to the website, adding that his plumber said he “was sure” the damage was caused by switching the geyser on and off.

Eskom launched its geyser switch-off campaign at the beginning of winter this year to help reduce load shedding, where the electricity to specific areas is cut when the overall demand rises too high. This strategy was first tested in the Western Cape after the power shortages experienced when the Koeberg nuclear power plant’s generators were down for maintenance and repairs in 2006.

Phunis Potgieter, of the Electrical Institute, this week blamed Eskom for problems like Van Gend’s. “I am not saying that the geyser was broken as a result of switching it on and off, but it is Eskom’s fault that there is a shared-load predicament because they utilise their funds carelessly,” he said, adding that Eskom needs to improve the maintenance of its existing power stations.

Andrew Etzinger, general manager of demand-side management at Eskom, said on Thursday that he was certain that Van Gend’s thermostat did not break as a result of switching his geyser off for a few hours daily.

“Before we embarked on this campaign, we looked at the possible costs from a safety and a technical point of view, and technically we found that there would be no negative consequences or else we wouldn’t have told the public to do it,” he said, adding that the campaign has so far been a success.

Also, he said, geyser thermostats have a short lifespan and often don’t last longer than three years — though the manager of Durban’s The Geyser Shop, Reve Pillay, told the M&G Online on Thursday that such thermostats last up to 12 years.

“They may even outlast the life of the actual geyser, and if it happens that they fail after a year or two, then it may be as a result of a drop in electrical voltages or a manufacturing problem,” Pillay said.

Etzinger said that Eskom has not directly received any complaints regarding the campaign. “In fact, there is a positive response because since the campaign started, we have saved about 280 to 500 megawatts of energy, which suggests that people are doing it [switching their geysers off],” he said.

Potgieter, however, maintains the geyser campaign is not a good idea. “People should be advised to set their geysers at lower temperatures and not switch them on and off completely,” he said. “Besides, people laugh it off and do not do it because reheating a geyser takes up more electricity than keeping it on at a lower temperature.”

He added that appliances such as pool pumps and dishwashers should rather be switched off to avoid load shedding.

However, geysers consume 40% of household electricity, said Etzinger — admitting, though, that Eskom has not done enough to inform the public about the campaign, except to tell them to join in. “We have not sent across the message about the myths and the facts of this campaign. Pool pumps and dishwashers are flexible loads and they don’t take up as much energy as geysers do,” he said.

He said that Eskom is drafting an information sheet, which will be released to the public, on the facts of the geyser campaign and other load-shedding issues.