Energy Management and Project Consulting

The SA energy crunch

SA, with many other countries – developed and emerging – across the world, is feeling the impact of an energy supply squeeze.
The reasons for this are many, some generally acknowledged and others more controversial. Regardless the causes, we need to react.

Logically we have two principal options to work worth: increase supply and decrease demand.

Supply
While the bulk of the work associated with increasing supply is within the domain of the national utility, Eskom, there are possibilities for private organisations to become involved with Cogeneration and Distributed generation projects, thereby producing usable energy either of their own consumption, or (and) selling back to Eskom under the newly launched Power Purchase Programme.

The projects that Eskom has in the pipeline to increase capacity are now well documented and very much in the public domain. Expenditure on capacity ramp up is estimated at between R300bn and R1.3tn depending on the timing, time scale and the exchange rate data used.
Eskom’s objective is to invest in new conventional and nuclear power stations in order to double existing power generating capacity to 80,000MW by 2025.

Demand
As becomes obvious when we look at the timelines associated with bringing further capacity on stream, demand management is a crucial feature of the planning to alleviate the energy crisis and Eskom has in established a specifically focussed division and funding pool to encourage this aspect of energy management.

Demand management holds a number of significant benefits, led by:
    -    rapid results
    -    significantly lower investment

Demand management means using less of the power generated by Eskom, and using less energy generally. On this side of the equation we can also consider those technologies that make use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar that can assist consumers to reduce their costs.

Reducing demand while maintaining productivity makes clear financial sense to any business, no matter what industry. Eskom has identified the rapid progress that can be made in this area with the correct focus and given its severe capacity constraints, has recently published a financial incentive structure intended to motivate all members of society to respond to the call for reduced consumption. Further details of this scheme can be viewed at The Eskom PCP.

For further information on the topic of reducing energy consumption please refer to the section on Saving Energy.