Like Your Local Supermarket Charging You More For Vegetables if you Farm Your Own

• Eskom proposes charging Solar Panel owners more for Electricity Fixed Costs
• One scenario that will make actually going completely Off Grid a distinct possibility
• Do NOT Share this article with your local supermarket or the Department of Agriculture

Consider this scenario:

1. Your local supermarket experiences a shortage of fresh produce and, as a result, has to ‘ration’ it’s sales of fresh produce to consumers.
2. Savvy consumers resort to establishing their own home farms to grow their own fresh produce – relying on supermarkets for occasional ’emergency’ needs.
3. Savvy home farm consumers sell (but mostly give away) their surplus fresh produce to supermarkets.
4. Over time your supermarket recovers from their shortages, experiences a surplus that it cannot sell before the fresh produce goes off as many consumers have become DIY food suppliers.
5. Fearing a drop in profits supermarkets introduce an ’emergency usage add-on tariff’ for all consumers who were savvy enough to start their own home farms and who only occasionally buy essential fresh produce from supermarkets.

Now, I am sure that ever person who has ever had to actually work to put food on the table will realise just how patently ridiculous and potentially destructive of the financial well being of any business that the above scenario presents.

But, whenever Eskom proposes a similar scenario we treat it with a sense of inevitability. That the proposal will see the light of the day as the people in charge are limited by their inability to actually think like entrepreneurs, like business persons and like a caring corporate.

Eskom said it wanted to move to a tariff structure with significant fixed daily network charges independent of usage.

This means that South African households and businesses would have to pay a much higher fixed charge, regardless of whether they use electricity.

This would lead to those with solar panels paying far more than before, as they would need to pay daily fixed costs to Eskom to be connected to the grid.

Eskom forgets that technology is moving at a faster pace than the emptying of a gravy train by well connected politicians.

It has been estimated that under Eskom’s proposal, consumers using less than 100 kWh per month can expect an electricity bill increase of around 130% per month.

Maybe Eskom should be looking at the near future which could well be one in which the larger proportion of electricity generated and releases into the grid will come from private Small Scale Embedded Generation plants utilising Solar and Wind?

At present consumers have their day time electricity needs covered with Solar Panels, their night time needs covered with batteries but the gap in the market is for a system that will cover 24 hours in a day. At present only wind power offers a cost effective entry level point but has problems – bird strikes, noise, moving parts, 5 – 10 year life cycle for most small wind turbines.

Already consumers are asking about Wind Power and, the day when a wind generator is released that is powerful, quiet, compact and offering a reasonable ROI is when we will have our next explosion of renewable energy installations. Couple such a beast with solar panels and a small battery or a small generator or an Electric Vehicle with Vehicle to Grid capabilities and the ability to cut that umbilical cord to the grid becomes a reality for most consumers.

As per normal, Eskom is stuck in a slow grinding decision process that will render their proposal moot when affordable technology catches up.

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