By Kouthar Sambo

As South Africans still grapple with the effects of load shedding, many people are looking for options to beat the blues of power cuts.

Speaking on VOC’s Breakfast show earlier this morning, the reality is that we must prepare for load shedding for an extended period, said chairman of the South African Independent Power Producers Association (SAIPPA) Brian Day.

According to Day, there are two streams of efforts where a big impact can be made at a time.

“Firstly, is the work Eskom is doing internally, with the energy availability factor, regarding how well their generation facilities are functioning. Secondly, the availability to build new capacity, both to plug the shortfall and to be ready for the end of the older stations,” outlined Day.

The reality is it is not getting better as we hoped, explained Day, even with two units of Kusile coming back, the third unit will be back in a few weeks as well, there has still been a decline over the last three to four weeks in the energy availability factor.

“We need to prepare for a medium-term reality, approximately five years plus, and then spend the necessary money to optimise that. However, if you have Stage four load shedding, most municipalities give a two-hour slot, which is easier to navigate,” added Day.

“The first point is to implement as many energy efficiency activities within the home such as light bulb LED’s, ensuring you cook on gas on the stovetop as opposed to electricity. Also, anything with an element in electricity uses a lot of electricity. Oven, geysers, stovetops are your big users within the household,” detailed Day.

Day further highlighted the essential uses of gas such as cooking, geysers for solar water heaters and you can put in various inverter battery systems for some lighting and Wifi before spending the big money on huge inverter backup systems.

“There is also the possibility of having solar PV on your roofs to charge those systems and then have significantly more energy,” advised Day.

“You then supplement generation into the total system of the country, which improves the issue of load shedding for everybody. Eskom has done an analysis that there are now between four to five gigawatts of PV, that is on rooftops of households but also for commercial use.

“However, the load shedding situation will not end anytime soon,” added Day.

Photo: Eskom Hld SOC Ltd/Facebook