Use less ... or it’s lights out, says city

Babalo Ndenze

Metro Writer

Capetonians have been warned to cut their power consumption or face rolling blackouts as there were in 2008.

The warning has been issued by the City of Cape Town, which has launched a campaign this week calling on consumers to cut electricity consumption across the city by 10 percent to keep the lights on.

Middle- to high-income groups, the biggest electricity guzzlers, have been called on to slash their power consumption by a whopping 25 to 40 percent.

Eskom said last year that by cutting back on supplies to neighbouring countries and other measures, it could provide enough power to see the country through the football World Cup, but it warned that there would be blackouts – or load-shedding – in winter this year and next.

Emergency load-shedding is a controlled means of managing available electricity when an unscheduled power shortage occurs. The city and Eskom will be running electricity-saving campaigns to ensure consumers are not too badly affected by load-shedding.

The city’s campaign uses the slogan “Electricity is expensive, saving is simple” and calls on residents to set their geyser thermostats for a lower temperature, to shower instead of taking a bath, to fit a water-saving showerhead, and to install a geyser blanket to save up to 15 percent on electricity bills.

Asked about the campaign, the city’s head of energy and climate change, Sarah Ward, said there were several reasons why the city was calling on residents to cut electricity consumption.

“One of them is that electricity tariffs are going up,” Ward said. “We’ve had cheap electricity in South Africa in the past and so people are not used to being energy efficient.

“And there’s definitely a threat of load-shedding. It’s very likely this year.”

Cutting consumption by 10 percent overall would make Capetonians less vulnerable to blackouts. A 25-40 percent reduction by middle- to high-income households would be ideal, Ward said.

Cape Town residents can expect an increase of about 20 percent in the price of electricity later this year.

In presenting the city’s budget, Ian Neilson, deputy mayor and head of the finance committee, said electricity was by far the City of Cape Town’s biggest income-generator, contributing R6.7 billion. This figure is expected to leap to R8.13bn in the 2011/12.

Eskom’s “bulk charge” to the city is to be R5.7bn in the 2011/12 financial year.

Neilson has said electricity is becoming a dominant budget factor.

The increase in the tariff for electricity was the biggest but would cover only two thirds of the cost. The shortfall had to be passed on to the consumer.

Ward said the energy-saving campaign was an important part of the city’s climate change agenda with respect to reducing its carbon footprint.

Eskom spokeswoman Hilary Joffe said the warning from the city was in keeping with what the power utility had said in January.

“We warned that the system would be tight for the next two years… It will be a real challenge to keep the lights on,” said Joffe.

babalo.ndenze@inl.co.za