So is there an alternative to just waiting for Eskom to build more dirty polluting power plants?
Well actually there is!
A small number of pioneers have been testing out an alternative strategy right here in Cape Town. Foremost of these is David Lipschitz. David has proposed letting us generate the power needed for the the periods of demand right in our own homes.
Ok so it is not necesarily production, possibly more like storage, unless you add solar and wind energy generation into the mix. Which would be the next logical step, but no before going that far what we are talking about is allowing households to install inverter and battery arrays, which would charge during periods of low demand like most of the night when almost all our electricity production is wasted to the grid. Then allow these arrays to dispense electricity to the household during the periods of high demand and more importantly, as we need to identify a viable financial model, dispense excess stored electricity back into the grid during these periods of high demand and let Eskom pay these households for the electricity dispensed back into the grid at an advantaged premium say two to one for electricity provided during demand periods.
This model would mean that if a household was willing to make the investment of a inverter battery array they could be compensated for assisting with load shedding at a household level and so over time either balance out the purchased of their electricity or alternatively even repay their investment and possiblbly be motivated to extend their arrays to produce more high demand period electricity, thus enabling a viable loadshedding model that would not require rolling power failures or the need to build more power plants.
If correctly incentivised the budget that would go towards building new power plants could rather be spent on incentivising households to extend their household inverter battery arrays with wind and solar units to actually charge the inverter battery arrays without the use of grid electricity during the day and so further increase national electricity production through a cleaner and more environmentally friendly and most important renewable manor.
The Government could also offer interest free (sponsored) lease programs to businesses and homeowners for the equipment, so that if they cannot afford the cost or even a loan to raise the funds needed they could possibly afford a monthly payment that might even be negated by the income they received for the electricity fed back into the grid.If need be to further reduce the cost on these systems because batteries are so expensive and have a limited life span the Gov could incentivise companies that could manufacture and rent out batteries taking back the old batteries to refurbish.
Actually there are just so many business models around this that we might not even have thought of yet, but would inspire a whole new local industry and massive job creation opportunities for companies installing and maintaining these systems, so much more than any new power station could possibly hope to match!
This could even inspire a whole industry in SA that could become an export industry adding to GNP.
So isn't is time we petitioned our politicians to make a wiser and better informed decisions to improve our countries energy production!
Please support this petition if you agree:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/South_African_Government_Level_the_Playing_fields_in_the_Electricity_Industry/?ciJGmbb
DetailsWritten by Super UserCategory: Community Heros
Well actually there is!
A small number of pioneers have been testing out an alternative strategy right here in Cape Town. Foremost of these is David Lipschitz. David has proposed letting us generate the power needed for the the periods of demand right in our own homes.
Ok so it is not necesarily production, possibly more like storage, unless you add solar and wind energy generation into the mix. Which would be the next logical step, but no before going that far what we are talking about is allowing households to install inverter and battery arrays, which would charge during periods of low demand like most of the night when almost all our electricity production is wasted to the grid. Then allow these arrays to dispense electricity to the household during the periods of high demand and more importantly, as we need to identify a viable financial model, dispense excess stored electricity back into the grid during these periods of high demand and let Eskom pay these households for the electricity dispensed back into the grid at an advantaged premium say two to one for electricity provided during demand periods.
This model would mean that if a household was willing to make the investment of a inverter battery array they could be compensated for assisting with load shedding at a household level and so over time either balance out the purchased of their electricity or alternatively even repay their investment and possiblbly be motivated to extend their arrays to produce more high demand period electricity, thus enabling a viable loadshedding model that would not require rolling power failures or the need to build more power plants.
If correctly incentivised the budget that would go towards building new power plants could rather be spent on incentivising households to extend their household inverter battery arrays with wind and solar units to actually charge the inverter battery arrays without the use of grid electricity during the day and so further increase national electricity production through a cleaner and more environmentally friendly and most important renewable manor.
The Government could also offer interest free (sponsored) lease programs to businesses and homeowners for the equipment, so that if they cannot afford the cost or even a loan to raise the funds needed they could possibly afford a monthly payment that might even be negated by the income they received for the electricity fed back into the grid.If need be to further reduce the cost on these systems because batteries are so expensive and have a limited life span the Gov could incentivise companies that could manufacture and rent out batteries taking back the old batteries to refurbish.
Actually there are just so many business models around this that we might not even have thought of yet, but would inspire a whole new local industry and massive job creation opportunities for companies installing and maintaining these systems, so much more than any new power station could possibly hope to match!
This could even inspire a whole industry in SA that could become an export industry adding to GNP.
So isn't is time we petitioned our politicians to make a wiser and better informed decisions to improve our countries energy production!
Please support this petition if you agree:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/South_African_Government_Level_the_Playing_fields_in_the_Electricity_Industry/?ciJGmbb
DetailsWritten by Super UserCategory: Community Heros
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