FOCUSING ON ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION
With an increase in development comes an increase in energy requirements for industry as well as domestic households. Urbanisation over decades has resulted in concentration of people in large cities with the accompanying pressure on available resources. In South Africa we are well aware of the authorities' approval of an annual electricity cost increase of around 23% from 2010 to 2012. There is now even further talk of these increases continuing for an additional period at the end of the initial period. This means that the cost of R0,7737/kWh in June 2010 will increase to around R1,44/kWh by 2012. If an additional two years would see similar increases, we will find electricity costing us R2,18/kWh by 2014. Considering that we paid R0,305/kWh in 2007, we have already seen an increase of 250% in three years, with an expected 715% increase over seven years to 2014. This excludes the knock-on effect on the cost of food and other daily needs. Very few citizens would have seen an income increase of 100% per annum!
With the cost of electricity and reality of salary increases in mind, we have but two options namely to just pay the extra expense or reduce our electricity consumption. This is where GreenKonsult proposes to partner with you as a consumer. Within the context of appropriate solutions, various technologies are available to individually and jointly assist in reducing your electrical bill. Some are "free", some are relatively inexpensive, and others quite expensive. Each has, within the consumer's individual consumption pattern, a payback period to repay the initial capital outlay with the realised savings.
Some savings can be achieved for "free" by switching off lights not used, reducing the geyser temperature, boiling just enough water needed, and reducing the length of showers / volume of bath water. At a relatively low cost further savings can be had through installing a geyser blanket, replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy saving light bulbs, installing roof insulation to control heating / heat loss of the building. The greatest impact however is made through technologies to manage and/or reduce or replace ESKOM electricity in the heating of water. These include geyser controllers, LP gas water heaters, solar heating, and heat pumps. The latter two can be purchased with a rebate offered by ESKOM and both has a large potential to reduce domestic electricity consumption.
Other technologies to assist in reducing our domestic dependence on ESKOM electricity include installation of LED lighting, PV panels and wind generators. The latter two, being quite expensive compared to its relative consumption savings, might not be on the average wishlist for domestic purposes.
