You forgot to mention the shortage of skills and the lack of brains in management.
I'll reserve comment on that until I've met with more senior people at Eskom. The folk I met the other day were some very clever people, with PhD's and MSc's.
You'll not find too many folks here that are that gullible to believe that all of a sudden the consumers have saved 10%
Of course the customers have not saved, it's been a bit of a wangle and even Eskom believes that to be the case. I read my earlier post and I see I conveyed myself incorrectly apologies for that. The power was defnitely saved, to a factor somewhere short of 10% by some means but certainly not the customers, no ways have the customers saved 10% and that's what I meant. Apologies for not making myself clear on that point.
There aren't too many municipalities with the capability of remotely switching geysers, so I'm not falling for that suggestion.
That is right yes but a lot more have installed the technology since 2005. I am also likewise not suggesting they used this as a sole means to reduce consumption. Where I live, they certainly have. I cannot be everywhere at once and privvy to all details so I think that, where I live at least, something was saved by turning off our hot water in the mornings and in the evening peak. I am not concerned at this stage about the country as a whole, my current focus is on Gauteng where the majority of the municipalities do have remote control systems. So I am thinking at least a percentage of the total percentage reduction obtained must have come out of that, at least.
Switching off the street lights at 9pm is well past the peak, so that has no bearing on the generating capacity being incapable of peak demand.
No it doesnt' and not what I am saying. What I am however saying that they are doing that, even though it doesn't make sense. When the crap first started in 2006 with the "bolt incident", they turned the streetlights off at around 7PM. However as you can imagine they are a bit clueless so they do it at 9PM in the evening on occasion.
My focus is not on what is being done (or not being done) as I will readily admit the current means of DSM in SA is a total f**k-up and this is why Eskom is busy with folks like me (they came to me - I didn't approach them) in formulating a more reasonable and sane approach, with much haste. The municipalities are much of the problem aswell, they can't even manage the ripple control system properly. The things I have seen occur on the network, have much amused me and annoyed me of course when they cut the power for no good reason. And when I phone my contacts there they blame some poor hapless orc in the control room or they blame the equipment for being antique.
The residential "sector" accounts for only 17.5% of overall electricity consumption in ZA, it does however have a high peak demand.
That is correct, there is another factor that also comes into play in that this sector also has a relatively constant high demand when its cold or when its very hot and aircons are turned on to cool people down. Many people nowadays have aircons in their homes (myself included- I cannot tolerate the weather in summer and neither can my computers). And there is never any mention of the things I have seen because they always play the "race card" when these things are mentioned. I have seen people on the West Rand connect a steel shopping trolley (the old Checkers/Pick 'n Pay type) to the mains with automotive jumper cables in an attempt to make a heater. The usual result is a power outage of 2-3 hours, sometimes they get burnt or killed in the process. The other favourite of theirs is to turn up the stove plates, all four of them, to warm up the house. How wasteful is that and I have no doubt that contributes to the high demand in winter.
That sucks bro, ours is on 