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: 2008-03-15 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
By Thabiso Thakali
Residential and commercial users of electricity who fail to reduce consumption will be hit hard by the looming power cuts.
Eskom is now looking to the commercial and residential sectors to reduce demand by 10 percent or bear the brunt of power disruptions. The utility has announced that it had moved into the power rationing phase from now until July.
“We have not received the 10 percent reduction from all customers,” said Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga.
| ‘They leave the lights on’ |
He appealed to all South Africans to work with Eskom to ensure that the 3 000MW demand reduction is achieved without scheduled load shedding.
President Thabo Mbeki also told a community development workers’ indaba in Midrand on Friday that South Africans were not saving enough power.
“They leave the lights on, and then there are the floodlit billboards advertising rum and things like that,” Mbeki said, adding that if people didn’t switch off their geysers soon, “we are going to have load shedding.”
Eskom will begin load shedding on March 31. The period that will be used to set the base consumption level, from which savings have to be achieved, is from October 2006 to September 2007.
Maroga said major industrial users, such as mines and aluminium smelters, had contributed immensely in stabilising the national electricity grid following talks with them.
But consumer and non-governmental organisations are outraged by the rationing plan, labelling it unfair.
“The manner in which this rationing is done makes certain people more equal than others. The poor will now pay a higher cost than the wealthy and industries because we are told that a 10 percent reduction will be benchmarked against metered consumption in 2007,” said Bobby Peek, national director of environmental group groundWork.
“Rich households with air-conditioners, multiple appliances and swimming pools will have bigger rations than poor households who do not have enough for more than four or five lights and the television. Instead, the reckless wasteful consumers who have emitted most carbon in the past will continue to burn with larger rights than those who have already conserved energy,” he added.
Lillibeth Moolman, chairperson of the SA National Consumer Union, said the whole power dilemma was unacceptable. “Eskom cannot just impose rationing to the poor consumers willy-nilly, because many have already started using less electricity.
“How are they going to determine who has already conserved energy?
“This has be made more reasonable,” said Moolman.
Tristen Taylor, energy policy officer with Earthlife Africa, said: “Residential electricity is a social good and not a commodity that could be left to the market to regulate. Already 30 percent of our population is deprived of this social need.”
The SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the business sector was committed to ensuring that everybody was treated equally in the power crisis period.
“We want equality in the load-shedding period because we are all in this boat together. We agree with nailing those who fail to comply with a need to use energy efficiently. Electricity rationing according to usage seems to be the best solution at the moment,” said Bill Lacey, director of the chamber.
Marius Louw, director of strategic and co-operate affairs at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said businesses appreciated that they had been warned beforehand about the planned load shedding and how it would be carried out.
“It will still hamper our business, but there is nothing we can do at this stage. We understand that there are capacity constraints and we have now planned around that,” he said.