Wealthy South Africans are turning to private solar installations to protect themselves from the country’s poor power grid and rolling blackouts, according to Semaphore.

The beleaguered South African state-owned power company Eskom said June saw more solar installations than in the past six months. data. Wealthy South Africans are relying on solar panels and home batteries to keep their lights on during periodic rolling blackouts, the newspaper reported. semaphore.

Eskom has struggled to perform its most basic functions, but a combination of tax credits and cheap Chinese solar panels is encouraging South Africans to buy the equipment, according to Semaphore. South Africa has added 1 gigawatt of electricity from its solar panels in the past two months, according to Semaphore.

according to africa newsEskom is said to be plagued by corruption and mismanagement. The company’s former CEO said in April that the company was losing $55 million a month to corruption and wastefulness, while the company continued to drown in debt and undermine the nation’s energy needs. said he was unable to meet. (Related: Brian Dean Wright: Democrats want America to be like South Africa. It’s a terrible idea.)

South Africa passes law to requisition white-owned land without compensation https://t.co/N0HsALZnIY pic.twitter.com/dhHwkq1zoA

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“These numbers tell us that households and the private sector are taking matters into their own hands,” said Wix Kruger, director of the University of Cape Town’s Electricity Futures Institute, according to Semaphore. rice field. “It is driven not by government policy per se, but by despair.”

Power outages lasting several hours are frequent in South Africa, with more “blackout” hours recorded so far in 2023 than in 2022 as a whole, according to Semaphore. Semafor said that while South Africans with solar panels are not completely cut off from the Eskom grid, the installation of the solar panels will reduce their dependence on the Eskom grid and the energy households will draw from the grid. quantity will also decrease.

If the country’s wealthy citizens continue to reduce their dependence on Eskom, the country’s poor could end up subsidizing the energy system more than the rich, Semafor said. Eskom’s bill is based on the system’s energy usage and fixed costs, and because solar panels use less energy from the grid, wealthy bill payers pay less fixed costs than low-income South Africans. This may be the case, as the share of the burden of According to Semaphore.

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