Cape Town - A number of residents have raised frustrations that while they grapple with the fourth consecutive week of load shedding, their electricity bills remain the same.
Eskom announced this week that load shedding would continue.
Stop CoCT founder Sandra Dickson said many households were living in despair.
“Basically the cost of living increased significantly overnight and it is now a question of balancing a family’s needs between food, electricity and paying bills.
“Those who can get credit are piling up even more debt because they are forced to make short term loans at micro lenders just to be able to put food on their table.
“Residents who are charging batteries report an increase in their daily electricity units consumed.
“Others report an increase in usage of electricity. This added spike may be caused from home appliances starting up when the electricity returns after load shedding.
“Those that wait out load shedding periods are experiencing a slight decrease in electricity units used per day,” she said.
“It is therefore clear that the ‘incredible transition’ to renewables will be more than painful because the haste at which it is advocated and enforced is not keeping track with the implementation and limitations of renewable solutions.
“Eskom is failing South Africa dismally and a switch to renewables is not going to happen in only a few months. We are talking about years. The root of this is continued gross mismanagement, corruption and incompetence at Eskom.”
Woodstock Residents’ Association chairperson Andrea Couvert said: “As a citizen I am peeved by the constant power outages, which are the consequence of the government’s inability to have a serious policy of developing and maintaining the electricity system. From a user point of view, not much changes because the higher consumption (kitchen, washing machine, shower, etc.) of electricity are simply shifted to when the energy returns. Lights, computers and other appliances have an average limited on consumption.”
Energy expert Ted Blom said: “50% of account is non-consumption charges. Of the consumption charges, many units are used to restart appliances from cold - so I do not expect much lower consumption as a rule.”
Cape Times