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South Africa goes off-grid
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South Africa Power Crisis

The local authorities in Cape Town, South Africa face a power crisis as electricity theft, unpaid bills and switching to renewable energy puts pressure on the electricity companies. Even though the economy and population has grown, the city expects to sell far less electricity than it has since 2006.

Solar electricity panels are appearing on rooftops all over the cities of South Africa, leaving municipalities from Thembelihle in the Northern Cape to Mantsopa in the Eastern Free State in trouble – and it is getting worse.

Leslie Rencontre, Director of Electricity in Cape Town explained the increase in prices to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) last week: “Where you see a decrease in electricity sales, which we are seeing because of high prices and the introduction of renewable energy, the increase in the electricity tariff has to take that into account.”

As new data confirmed last week, municipalities around the country rely heavily on the profit they get from reselling mostly Eskom power to their towns and cities. In Johannesburg about half of the city´s prepaid electricity boxes claim that the households have used no electricity. It is thought that people have stopped paying for electricity due to the higher prices.

– We are facing massive bypassing of meters and sabotaging of meters, Quentin Green, acting Chief Executive of the Johannesburg agency, City Power, told NERSA.

He explains that between the revenue loss of such illegal connections and the need for maintenance, some of it caused by the load from those illegal connections, they cannot sustain the business.

For most local governments, about a third of their revenues come from electricity sales, where the money is put into other vital services such as roads.

As the price of electricity increases, so does the number of people who choose to live off the grid and use solar power to get electricity instead. These small electricity storage solutions are becoming more and more attractive, but this can eat to absurdities.

– One of the key threats we discussed with NERSA  previously is that we were finding higher-end households were able to reduce their electricity consumption and were then accessing subsidies aimed at the indigent, Rencontre said, referring to packages intended to make more electricity accessible for the poorest of the poor.

Cape Town, Johannesburg and a dozen other municipal areas have appeared before NERSA to demand and beg to be allowed to increase the amount they charge residents for electricity. In terms of NERSAs guideline local authorities can increase their prices by about 2 per cent, but must get permission for anything above that. Last week municipalities askes for a hike of more than 20 per cent for business customers.

– We really hope and believe that NERSA will look favourably on this application,” David McThomas, a manager for the Breede Valley district in the Western Cape said.

In …

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Phantom loads

phantomloads-6390436

Sounds like something that should be discussed during October, it is scary, but not in a paranormal way…. a phantom load is simply electricity that is being used when an electrical appliance is turned off but still plugged in. These are thieves, they use up or steal electricity but don’t give anything in return. Much like vampires, they may look cool but don’t do anything good for us in the long run.

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UK energy firms kept £400m when customers closed accounts

Big six thieves[/caption]The “big six” energy firms have been told to hand back more than £400m owed to customers when they switch accounts and forget to reclaim overpayments from regular monthly payments.

Credit left in customer accounts when people and businesses move or switch suppliers has accumulated over the last six years, energy regulator Ofgem said today on BBC Radio.

The energy regulator, which says its estimates are the minimum owed, has called the amount “unacceptably large”. Industry lobby group UK Energy claimed that it can be hard to trace customers who move, but did not deny that they never even try.

Ofgem thinks 3.5 million domestic and 300,000 business accounts are affected.

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Turn off your power for a week… what would you learn?

So, you are sitting in your climate controlled home, with lights, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, heaters, fans, TVs, computers, home theater systems, running water, sanitary systems and all the other things that go along with modern life. Now, go into your garage, or whatever room where your power panel resides and shut off the main switch. Now walk through your home, look around at all the electronic appliances and gadgets that are now nothing more than lumps of worthless metal and electronics. Now imagine how you would live if none of these things came back on? What if this was not just your home but your neighborhood? City? Country? World? Sounds drastic doesn’t it? Could you live, could you survive without all of these electronics being powered from the grid?

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Fuel Cells ready for mass market

Oorja Protonics, which specializes in methanol fuel cells, is soon to release a product able to run a home or small business.

Check out the video on the next page: the 5-kilowatt fuel cell fits on top of a gurney. Its about the same size as a suitcase and the power costs about 25cents per kilowatt hour.

“You could use it for auxiliary power for trucks, RVs or marine applications, or for off-grid power for homes or farms,” said CEO Sanjiv Malhotra. “This pays for itself in less than 12 months” compared to conventional power.

For larger applications, the fuel cells can be chain-ganged together. Connect twenty of them and they would be capable of generating 100 kilowatts of power — as much energy as the recently unfurled Bloom Energy Server, but at a tiny fraction of the price.

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Solar’s the New Black

Soaring electricity prices and fear of recurrent blackouts are pushing liberal New Yorkers to switch to solar power.

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