Government for the People: access to Electricity

Power and electricity make the world go round and those without it are doomed to live in “darkness”. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) as at 2008, more than 1.5 billion (or 21%) of the world population did not have access to reliable and consistent supply to electricity, in whatever form. Of the 1.5 billion people without electricity, 40% are in Sub-Sahara Africa. This puts the electrification rate in Sub-Sahara Africa at a shocking 29%, with those in rural Africa being the worst hit. When it comes to South Africa, the picture is a lot brighter (pun intended).

According to the most recent General Household Survey as carried out by Stats SA in 2010, 71.1% of households in South Africa had access to electricity from the Eskom grid. For those households with no access to electricity, wood and paraffin was their main source of energy. Limpopo Province is the province with the lowest rate of access to electricity, at 47.1%, with 46.6% of households in that province using wood as their main source of energy. The Stats SA survey clearly reveals that, those provinces with a majority of the population living in rural or peri-urban areas have lower access to electricity. Provinces with the highest number of households situated in urban areas such as, Gauteng, Free State and the Western Cape, have an electrification rate in excess of 80%. Limited access to electricity means that those without electricity people, have to go to great lengths to perform basic tasks and functions such as, boiling of water, cooking of food and charging of cellphones. South Africa’s electrification rate of 71.1% is just below the global rate of 78.2%.

Problem

Wind Energy Farm

In many parts of Africa, poor access to electricity, according to a study by the World Bank, is due to factors such as: shortage of electricity generation capacity; lack of incentives to supply electricity to rural and peri-urban households; relatively higher costs of supplying to rural and peri-ruban areas due to low population density in those areas and weak implementation capacity, especially as this relates to rural and peri-urban areas.

The overall cost of electricity is one other major barrier to access, however, South Africa’s electricity is cheap relative to most countries, but still expensive for the poor.

The Ideas: Solutions

Develop clear on-grid and off-grid power strategies.

On-Grid: Going Greener

a) Many parts of South Africa, especially in the Western and Eastern Cape have windy conditions throughout most of the year. This means that over and above solar, these areas should be focusing more on wind as a source of energy. Eskom ought to be building more wind energy farms, to supplement the existing coal and nuclear sources.

Off-Grid: Going Greener

a) South Africa is blessed with sunny weather, even during the winter months, therefore the focus should be in intensifying the use of solar power as the main source of energy, especially for low cost housing. Not only will this reduce SA’s carbon footprint it would also ensure lower cost of electrification for poor households. Government ought to intensify the programme of including solar panels on every low cost house built. Currently solar power is used largely to heat water, however, imagine if each low cost home was equipped with a battery that could store solar-generated power such that the battery becomes the only source of power not only to heat water but to power up each low cost home.

Our Politicians must show willingness to create effective government!!