SA power savings impress

Johannesburg - South Africa, which is battling chronic power shortages and low spare capacity, saved about 800 megawatts in the 2008/09 financial year, an official at the state-owned utility said on Thursday.

Andrew Etzinger, general manager for demand side management at Eskom , said the savings exceeded by far the 150 MW target prescribed by the country's power regulator.

"By the end of this financial year which ended at the end of March, we will be at roughly 800 MW of energy savings... it certainly has made a big difference," Etzinger told a power conference in Johannesburg.

The utility has rolled out a programme to exchange bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) which consume considerably less energy than conventional globes.

Since it began in 2004, more than 18m CFLs have been exchanged for conventional globes, Eskom said on its website.

The utility also supplies industry, especially in the mining sector, with energy efficient technologies, including for motors, lighting, cooling and ventilation.

It has also begun to introduce solar water heaters into households, although progress there was slow, Etzinger said.

Eskom, which provides 95% of South Africa's power, has been rationing electricity since early last year, when a near collapse of the grid forced mines and smelters to shut for days, costing Africa's biggest economy billions of dollars.

The utility plans to spend R385bn over the next five years in new power generation, mainly based on coal, but has encouraged consumers to help save power and ease the immediate supply shortages.

- Reuters