Leveling the playing field in South Africa’s electricity industry is important because big business has access to perks that homeowners don’t have access to.
A few examples of these are:
- before tax and before VAT investments
- ability to sell electricity to the national grid and be paid for it
- ability to be paid to remove themselves from the grid at short notice
- ability to get Time of Use Tariffs, which are used to incentivise companies not to use electricity at peak times
- various types of energy efficiency rebates, etc.
If everyone has access to the electricity grid, then people can:
- supply the grid with electricity
- choose from whom they wish to buy electricity
- supply as much of their own electricity as possible and provide excess electricity to the grid to prevent load shedding and power failures
If the incentives are right then people can provide themselves with battery banks so that they don’t have power failures and people can even supply the grid with electricity when the sun isn’t shining.
Although Eskom and the South African government believe that this is impossible, Smart Mini-Grids which remain on the national Grid can power the grid.
And imagine if there were 1 million homeowners with 3 KW each. That would be 3 GW of electricity, equal to 60% of a Coal Power Station and the people could easily remove themselves from the grid between 6am and 10pm and like me not use any electricity for lighting, kettle, TV, internet, computers, garage door openers, etc.
- Sign the Azaaz petition here.
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