12/12/2019
I sometimes wish we did not grow up on Generations in this country, because wow, we love soap operas and we consume information like it is a soap opera.
This is why we have so many advertising interns earning peanuts, because we thought that working in advertising would mean having arguments about how many times Karabo slept with who and who. When in reality, most of your life in advertising is spent doing time sheets and putting your name on really sh*tty adverts.
Speaking of generation, Eskom is the perfect soap opera.
Lets tell the story of soweto:
Soweto has 350 000 households. The smallest roof is 30 square metres. This means you can put a 30m2 solar panel on each roof.
The average household consumption in South Africa is just under 4MW per year. This is all households with electricity in the country, from Sandton mansions to 4 rooms. Let us use the average and assume the typical household in Soweto consumes 4MW per year.
every square metre of solar produces around 150 Watts of electricity per hour. So 30sqr Metres means that each household in soweto has a dormant 4500 watts of potential electricity sitting on the roof. More eloquently put, 4,5KW (kilowatts) per hour.
Now Gauteng has around 3200 hours of sunlight a year and around 74% of this is strong sunlight (without clouds or rain) or 2400 hours. So the average household could generate 10 800 KW of electricity, or more eloquently put, 10 MW (megawatts) of electricity.
Assume that each household uses around 4MW a year, mentioned above, then you have 6MW extra per year.
There are 350 000 households in Soweto. This means that you could add an extra 2 100 000 MW of electricity a year. Or more eloquently put, 2100GW (gigawatts) of electricity per year.
Eskom currently generates around 230 000 gigawatts of electricity per year. The roofs of Soweto, could decrease the load by 3500GW (or 1,5%). 1400 of this completely for free to Eskom. We will come to the cost of the 2100GW in a second.
Eskom currently produces a KW of electricity at a cost of R1. It buys from IPPs (independant power producers) at around R2. Eskom currently sells a kw to residential areas for around 70cent to R4 per kilowatt, which then sell it onto the consumer.
Imagine for a second, that Soweto became a co-operative and that co-operative made all of the residents owners of their own power company. This company would install a solar system for every single household. Now the cost here varies, but let us work with R100k per household (including maintenance and replacement of batteries for 25 years assuming a small 4 room house). This is also assuming the co-operative work with the DTi and IDC to produce the solar panels here and cut out all of the middlemen in the process.
Each household would be given 4MW to use per year, and everything above that, they would be charged 75c per KW. Anything they don't use, wouold be sold back to Eskom at R1 per KW (their current production cost).
Assuming the average consumption of above, Each household would generate R6000 excess per year. Now this would equate to R150k for the 25 years per household. You make each household 25% profit share partners for every KW sold to the grid from their property, meaning we would wipe the R17billion eskom debt for all households in Soweto in a year and a half
So you would build a system that pays for itself, and has a R50k profit per household and gives each household free electricity, and now you have a co-operative that can produce all of the solar panels for residential use and then you replicate this model across all townships.
That is the potential of allowing IPPs. Now instead, we are busy sharing Naomi quotes about the politics and instead of looking at how we can participate. We are worried about the soap opera of privatization with insignificant players such as Cyril etc. We have turned it into a "black" and "white" thing because we are worried about there not being black players in the IPP space, when we have IPP gold mines sitting above our heads as you read this.
We could build an economy where the only electricity that eskom generates is for industrial use and all the residential areas own their own power generation.
And do you know what is even crazier, i knew nothing about this in the morning, I learnt all of it in the first two hours of today using Google. And here are all the references below:
1. Solar power generation: https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/solar-panels/how-much-electricity
2. Households in Soweto: https://www.southafricanmi.com/soweto-in-detail.html
3. Selling price of electricity:http://www.eskom.co.za/CustomerCare/TariffsAndCharges/Documents/Complete%20Tariff%202019%20web1.pdf
4. How much sunlight do we have: http://www.pretoria.climatemps.com/sunlight.php
5. Average electricity consumption in South Africa: http://www.exonconsulting.co.za/2016/08/13/how-much-electricity-does-a-home-use/
6. How much electricity does eskom produce:http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P4141/P4141May2019.pdf
Forget the headlines and soap operas, go do some research and you will find that there is so much opportunity in crisis!
Wondering if solar panels can meet your home's energy needs? Find out just how much electricity you can generate with solar panels in the UK. It's more than you think!
