The above graph shows how solar is slowly allowing businesses and households to move away from the unreliable expensive grid. These are small steps for now, but they are starting to take shape and more importantly this is revenue the SOE Eskom cannot make any revenue from.
One of the largest retailers in South Africa called Checkers/Shoprite announced they have just completed their 100th solar installation. Last year the retailer generated 151,243 MWh of solar /renewable energy which represents 7.2% of their entire energy consumed. They also have 1400 refrigerated trailers with solar panels and that saved over 3 liters of diesel per trailer per day.
The problem the retailer has is many of the retail outlets are not their own buildings and are in shopping centers so the roof space is not theirs and this space needs to be negotiated. The company is busy looking at alternative power suppliers so that they can reduce their reliance on the grid whilst they expand even more solar installations. Last year the growth helped reduce their usage by roughly 10% so if they can do this every year they should be off the grid within the next 7 years if not sooner.
Eskom the power utility SOE is expected to see electricity sales reduce by 3.5% every year which this has been doing for the last 3 years. The year on year decline is not directly affecting revenue for now as this is being kept stable by the larger increases funded by those left on the grid. There will become a tipping point however that this short sighted strategy will not work for long term.
The gold fish bowl scenario springs to mind where you start off with 100 gold fish paying your bills and the following year 20 have died and the remaining 80 have to pay the bill. Eventually you have so few gold fish left that they could never cover the bills and this is what is happening here.
220,000GWh in 2015/16 was the peak production year for electricity in South Africa and in 2024 had dropped to 183,300GWh. South Africans have been fed up for years with the failing SOE and those that can afford to invest in solar are and they will be leaving the grid for good. The problem is these are the clients that pay their bills each month and this revenue is not coming back. This is a vicious cycle with a no win scenario due to the never ending increases which ultimately chase even more people off the grid until there is only non payers left. If the SOE reduced prices they would stay in business and stop the customers leaving but try and explain that to a corrupt organization that is not educated. Numbers or any type of budgeting has never been that strong with the uneducated leaders and they will find out the hard way.
The 600% increases on electricity prices over the last 15 years has reduced the number of clints who can afford to pay their monthly bills or pay as you go systems. A township/city like Soweto which is massive (100 square kilometers) has roughly 2 million people residing here and only 40% pay their bills with the rest being classified as net zero customers.
What was quite ironic whilst writing this article our warehouse has no power due to 4 cables being solen overnight in the area. Power went of at home affecting the entire region due to whatever reason and most likely lack of maintenance again. This is ongoing and happens weekly so this is not load shedding, but may as well be because a black out is a black out. Every business and household is affected by this and there will be more discussing purchasing solar right now as a must have for their businesses and homes.
