WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-03-14 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
The gloves are off in the battle to get consumers to cut electricity consumption.
On Thursday, Eskom announced far-reaching plans to force key industrial, commercial and municipal customers to reduce power usage ahead of the unpredictable winter period.
In a strong statement to consumers on Thursday night, Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga said the power utility would introduce power rationing, which involves scheduled power cuts for consumers who could not prove that they had reduced power consumption by the targeted 10 percent – a total of 3 000 megawatts across the board.
Maroga was speaking after a “fruitful” meeting with metropolitan municipal leaders and Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin in Midrand, where the new power rationing phase, to be introduced on March 31, was thrashed out. Power cuts will occur between 6am and 10pm, not more than two hours on average, every second day.
| Apply for exclusion from the load-shedding schedule |
Once customers who can be supplied individually from Eskom’s network achieve the required energy reduction, they can apply for exclusion from the load-shedding schedule.
Power rationing would end on July 1.
Maroga said the aim is to get power consumption stabilised through penalties, monetary incentives and power conservation, and Eskom was hoping the planned increase in the price of electricity, estimated to be above 14,5 percent, and power rationing would change consumers’ behaviour.
“If tariffs go up, the positive consequence of that will be a change in behaviour on the part of consumers,” said Maroga, who refused to be drawn on the tariff percentage increase.
He said because of Eskom’s capacity problems, saving measures needed to be put in place to create a reserve power margin until its new-generation plants came on line.
Eskom wants to achieve a permanent reduction in power consumption by reducing demand and consumption.
Maroga said the system had “stabilised” since January’s extensive load-shedding process, but Eskom could not rule out a national blackout because the system is still “vulnerable”. Due to a “limited” response from commercial and residential customers to save electricity, consumption would be monitored and dealt with on an individual basis.
Maroga said Eskom’s communication on power cuts had been an issue, with customers complaining that they were not given accurate or adequate warning.
He said Eskom could do little to adequately “communicate” power cut schedules on time, as “our infrastructure to interface with customers was not designed to deal with load-shedding”.
Maroga said it was “Eskom’s aspiration that we get through the saving without load-shedding, to minimise destruction”.
He said Eskom’s “principle is clear” concerning honouring its contracts with countries such as Botswana to export electricity.
“We have to give the same respect to our customers across the border.
“We are not going to cut them off willy-nilly. However, when we feel the pain in South Africa, we all share the pain,” said Maroga.
He said Eskom also plans to embark on a carrot-and-stick power conservation plan whereby penalties and sanctions will be imposed for exceeding allocated quotas for energy consumption, and incentives given for saving energy.
“We have committed ourselves to a level of 2 500 MW of energy at any given point.
“We want to limit our unplanned outages.
“This is a steep target, but we are asking South Africans to take an uncomfortable stance,” said Maroga.