Wonder if SA will have electricity 10 years from now?
No, not a chance.
Under Nelson's reign, the socalled first democratic rule, Eskom, a state entity, was financially independant from the state (to such an extent that it was regarded as
semi-state!) and produced amoung the cheapest power in the world, if not
the cheapest.
This was frowned upon from above for various reasons, and acted upon & against by completely ignoring their new-built proposals (to allow for a seamless continuous supply in the future) for many years, many! - in other words normal planning was vetoed out, they had to make do with what they had.
The results anyone now knows - however,
do realize that planning a power plant takes many years: 15 to 20 for a nuclear one, a coal fired plant less.
SA got the last WB-loan for a coal-fired plant from them (Madupi or Kosile, dunno anymore which one).... leaving the door closed for another keeping the current financial fiasco in mind.
This leaves nuclear and 'alternative' power (solar, wind, geothermal or others) AND private companies.
Thanks to Zuma's 9-year reign nuclear is wishful thinking at the moment, so we're left at the mercy of the private vultures to "help" SA with energy supply.
The latter will be kept at a bare-minimum ideally to extort the maximum price now & later, and especially the long-term nature of these contracts will mean that SA will rank amoung the countries with the highest electricity price in the world.
This also will effect that foreign investment like industrialization will not happen, meaning poor annual growth for the foreseeable decades.
Those who (will) stay here will be better off by installing thermal solar (hot water) as well as some PV-solar (electric panels) to reduce their dependency on Eskom, if not now then in the near future - and yes, these are both financially effective as well as reliable in the long term these days however do choose wisely.
Topic: Long Way Up - Charley and Ewan goes electric (Read 6422 times)
