Penalties for excessive electricity use

LancelotSA said:
You have suggested that they encourage people to use less electricity. Surely that is what this will do? Use all you want but "*** and betaal" if this is your attitude!
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The difference is in the emphasis:

Penalising based on monthly usage: "We don't actually care if you're conscientious or not, we don't care how many people your household might have, if you exceed X per month then you have to cough up". - Just how would this encourage small households to save energy?

To use your earlier "Hummer" example, have you ever considered that the guy in his Hummer might actually only drive 25% of the km's per month that you do?

Now imagine if you will, that it is decided to impose a penalty on people who exceed a certain amount of petrol per month. The guy in his Hummer only drives an average of 5Km per day and consequently never exceeds the monthly "petrol cap" (even though he clearly the idea of "saving fuel" does not concern him at all).
Now you might need to travel much more Km's per month than him, and even though you choose a 1100 Uno to save on fuel, you cannot help but exceed the monthly allowance, resulting in you being penalised for being a "fuel waster" ..
 
redarrow said:
The difference is in the emphasis:

Penalising based on monthly usage: "We don't actually care if you're conscientious or not, we don't care how many people your household might have, if you exceed X per month then you have to cough up". - Just how would this encourage small households to save energy?

To use your earlier "Hummer" example, have you ever considered that the guy in his Hummer might actually only drive 25% of the km's per month that you do?

Now imagine if you will, that it is decided to impose a penalty on people who exceed a certain amount of petrol per month. The guy in his Hummer only drives an average of 5Km per day and consequently never exceeds the monthly "petrol cap" (even though he clearly the idea of "saving fuel" does not concern him at all).
Now you might need to travel much more Km's per month than him, and even though you choose a 1100 Uno to save on fuel, you cannot help but exceed the monthly allowance, resulting in you being penalised for being a "fuel waster" ..
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Well that is a perfect example and still it confirms my thoughts on the idea.

It does not matter what car you drive, if the ultimate desire is to reduce consumption then that is all that must be considered. If the hummer driver uses more petrol per kilometre but drives less kilometres than me then good for him, he is ultimately using less fuel. He should not be made to suffer... however if we both got charged more for petrol once we bought more than 100l per month then it would not matter what car we drove, as we would be getting penalised purely based on consumption.

Likewise if I have a two bedroom flat and have my heater on all night and my aircon on all day and use a tumble dryer and boil my water on the stove and have spotlights in all my rooms and have my geyser say 90 degrees then I must not complain when I have to pay more for my consumption. Equally so the person in the 10 bedroom house who does his bit to conserve electricity and as a result uses below the specified amount scores.

As long as it is a transparent process and we all know what the level is then we only have ourselves to blame if we get penalised. It is after all your choice to switch on the lights, heaters, aircons, tumble dryer etc etc etc etc....
 
LancelotSA said:
As long as it is a transparent process and we all know what the level is then we only have ourselves to blame if we get penalised. It is after all your choice to switch on the lights, heaters, aircons, tumble dryer etc etc etc etc....
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I disagree with your logic here. Compare the situation if the decision was to base the cap on usage per stand as opposed to account holder.That would mean a block of flats would be charged based on the total usage of all its occupants. How is that any more unfair than not considering the number of occupants in a household?
 
And what about SOHO? Do they get a "commercial" allocation .. ?
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When this point came up in a discussion on CapeTalk radio, the clear answer was "No allowance for that".

What is needed is to shift the consumption pattern, and different tariffs for different times of the day can do that.

yaaaay - electricity caps. Way to go.
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In the interview mentioned above, it was said that if one would exceed ones "allocation" for three months in a row one would get cut-off altogether.
 
LancelotSA said:
Just a little idea of what effect apartheid had on the economy of South Africa and an idea of what the current government inherited. I am by no means an ANC member but equally so I am aware of economic principles and have an understanding of the job taken on by them in 1994!



The entire paper can be found here... http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/Economics/staff/jfedderke/Documents/2006/ross30.pdf
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You have no idea what costs the future are going to pay for what the current regime is doing. Look at Zim to get an idea.

Eskom was a world class electricity utility when it was handed over to the ANC. Now they have to penalize customers who are using their product! What a joke. 10 years ago government was told this was going to happen. Now that it has happened you blame apartheid. Typical African mentality!
 
Has anybody not yet figured that municipalities can already not cope with their meter reading capabilities and anyway their ability to read on a specific date to do a accurate reading is anyway beyond most municipality's capabilities, I for now cannot see how municipalities will be able to cope with this 'extra ' task beset upon them their IT system's will also have to be adjusted and numerous other changes will have to be made to accommodate prepaid vending systems and other methods like MD metering .:confused:

What a joke I cannot see how this will be implemented successfully.:sick:
 
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VJB 449 said:
You have no idea what costs the future are going to pay for what the current regime is doing. Look at Zim to get an idea.

Eskom was a world class electricity utility when it was handed over to the ANC. Now they have to penalize customers who are using their product! What a joke. 10 years ago government was told this was going to happen. Now that it has happened you blame apartheid. Typical African mentality!
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And I hope by African you mean someone from Africa as I am white! :)

Unfortunately your response is typical of that of a "previously privileged" African... the "wonderful world class" (although I will argue this as the previous government had a history of gross underspending on infrastructure) Eskom which was handed across only had to provide electricity for a minuscule privileged portion of the population...

The current utility could probably also power just the elite suburbs with no problems...
 
LancelotSA said:
And I hope by African you mean someone from Africa as I am white! :)

Unfortunately your response is typical of that of a "previously privileged" African... the "wonderful world class" (although I will argue this as the previous government had a history of gross underspending on infrastructure) Eskom which was handed across only had to provide electricity for a minuscule privileged portion of the population...

The current utility could probably also power just the elite suburbs with no problems...
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This government has had 14 years to build more infrastructure and what have they done? The fact is previously Eskom was able to provide a service to its customers now its no longer able to thanks to inept, incompetent management. That's the bottom line.
 
Syndyre said:
This government has had 14 years to build more infrastructure and what have they done? The fact is previously Eskom was able to provide a service to its customers now its no longer able to thanks to inept, incompetent management. That's the bottom line.
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I don't know why you bother with him, all he's intrested in is ramming his ray of sunshine where yours doesn't shine.
 
Syndyre said:
True, I don't really know either. I'd love to know what he's on though.:D:p
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He's the Johan Beaurain of happiness, peddling his happy pills and getting down right nasty with anyone that doesn't share his views. :D
 
Ha ha Sloth you have a little issue with me then do you? Not surprising when my optimism interferes with your desire to have everyone view things in this country with doom and gloom.

I am in a career position where I can see what is being done in this country economically, financially and socially and I merely feel the desire to correct statements when I see ones which I feel are incorrect. My knowledge in no way makes me the ultimate expert on the matter but I am free to have my say just as much as the next man on the street, a lot of whom unfortunately just seem to perpetuate the current garbage being spread around.

It is everywhere. I see it in the totally inaccurate emails daily that are sent around warning of impending doom of this country, of course with the compulsory line at the end to please forward this to everyone you know to save them from the dastardly fate that is going to become them in SA, but with very little fact attached to the contents.

I have chosen to make an effort to discover the facts before flippantly writing off any decision taken by government or any other currently unpopular company, individual, group... I too have reached the stage in my life as a white, middle aged (at 36) male where I have realised that all too often we took things for granted that we got when we were younger. I see that where we came from effects every single aspect of our lives as much as we would love to say that it has been 14 years, things should have changed. I have come to realise that in everything in life things take time.

I have also come to realise that, as I state in my sig, it seems to have become popular to express anti SA views at every opportunity. I get annoyed by this, the same way you get annoyed by me being positive. I am not blindly positive, however, as you would like to believe. I do criticise. You just do not see it as I do not do it on here where it will make no difference. I accept other people's criticism too... I just feel that often all the facts are not given. I do not respond to every single thread on this forum but when I see something said that annoys me I will respond. If this happens to be in every thread you read then apologies but you and I obviously have the same interests but with totally different view points on them.

I often query but am yet to get an answer of when I have been downright nasty. I often get provoked by the likes of you here with your insinuations of me ramming sunshine up people's asses and asking why someone bothers to respond to me, due to my view not agreeing with yours, but as soon as I say anything about your views i will either be insulting you or being personal. It definitely seems to be a matter of agree with me or else bugger off attitude you have. Sorry if I feel differently to you about penalties for electricity. Sorry if I feel all was not hanky dory during the apartheid years.

If you would only like people to respond that agree with all your sentiments then perhaps a public forum would not be the best place to post your views...

EDIT : While typing this I see someone said a similar thing to me in the post above mine.... it seems the same applies in reverse too... if I do not share your views I must either be ignored or have your views forced on me.
 
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No issue with you, nothing personal. I see you as nothing more than a hot air balloon. "My Little Ponies" chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I got as far as my nick in your post, sorry but I'm bored of your retorical rantings.
 
LancelotSA said:
EDIT : While typing this I see someone said a similar thing to me in the post above mine.... it seems the same applies in reverse too... if I do not share your views I must either be ignored or have your views forced on me.
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It was a joke, relax. ;)
 
Slooth said:
No issue with you, nothing personal. I see you as nothing more than a hot air balloon. "My Little Ponies" chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I got as far as my nick in your post, sorry but I'm bored of your retorical rantings.
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...suppose you need to be forgiven, you are merely one of the lemmings following the crowd in SA at the moment so you cannot be blamed for your ignorance...
 
Syndyre said:
It was a joke, relax. ;)
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Ha ha you guys have serious problems understanding the written word... I was stating that the post of yours agreed with me when I said that it seems as if your view, no matter what it is, on here does not conform to the view of others you tend to get shot down...

So relax!
 
Ok I admit! Eskom wasn't mismanaged. Managment weren't paid over 50 million whilst it's infrastructure wasn't maintained. Eskom never sold off electricity to other countries while implementing load shedding on it's own people. Government were never alerted to the need to upgrade eskom infrastructure and Tbone never said sorry on television for failing to listen.

I admit this is the fault of apartheid and I'm to blame for being white. I say raise the cost of electricity by more than 50%!

EDIT: Why is there no forum on that site you advertise? Retorical question, we already know the answer. Which product on that website are you trying to peddle?
 
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