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Penalties may hike electricity bills by 400%
Although South Africa has experienced a temporary reprieve from load shedding due to reduced demand from the global economic meltdown, plans are fully underway for Eskom to implement the Power Conservation Program (PCP), of which one part is the Energy Conservation Scheme (ECS). ECS is what everyone is calling “penalties”, which are scheduled to come into effect in August 2009.
The ECS will start with the largest electricity users first and quickly roll out to cover the vast majority of commercial, industrial and large residential users. Under ECS, a commercial customer will be allocated an amount of electricity that is 10% less than what they used in the 2006/2007 baseline period. Should the customer use more than the allocation, the cost per kWh will rapidly increase from the current average cost of about R0.30 per kWh to as high as R9 per kWh. To put this in perspective, a customer who uses the exact same number of kWh in 2009 that they used in the baseline period could see their monthly electricity bill rise by 400%.
Fortunately, there are some relatively easy ways for commercial buildings to meet this challenge. One of these is to install occupancy sensors to control the lights and air cons. Companies offering this technology, such as Electro Sense, have documented savings of up to 65% of the entire electricity bill for customers in South Africa, under the conditions.
In the field of occupancy sensors, South Africa has unique conditions relating to electricity supply and not all sensor technology performs well here. When faced with penalties that could increase electricity bills more than fourfold, one wants to be sure that power-saving systems will work.
Electro Sense offers creative rental and financing options that can result in no upfront cost and monthly payments that are less than half of the savings so the customer sees a triple benefit, no out-of-pocket cost to install, reduced electricity bills and savings that meet the requirements of the proposed penalties.
