Comments on: Eskom hikes could give SA world’s priciest power

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:44:20 +0000

@Jan: No, the article quite plainly says it’s more expensive at this point in time. USA has quite low electricity prices in global terms, but analysts, or in this case a so-called “economist” just love to compare ZA prices with US prices to make a point for some reason. Just as a matter of interest, I did a quick check, and both Mexico and Israel’s electricity is more expensive that ours.

Yes, electricity is becoming too expensive in ZA, but this doesnt make the base facts of this article any less BS. If the writer had spent 5 quality minutes on google he’d have discovered it, but I feel this is the kind of person that doesn’t let facts get in the way of a sensationalist piece. Even after 3x 45% increases, we’re still cheaper than a lot of places in EU were a few years ago, according to some price charts I found.

The danger of this kind of reporting is that if everyone says “We’re not happy because our electricity is more expensive than US! We won’t be happy until it’s cheaper!”, Eskom can say “oh, but it is” and ignore public pleas for another few years.

By: Jan Jooste

Jan Jooste — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:11:10 +0000

Mike’s argument covers the proposed price increases. Even if the SA’s electricity is now 40 % cheaper than the USA’s tariffs (and I think they are now the most expensive) the gap will shrink to only 13 % cheaper after the first round of increases. The second round of increases will definitely ensure us a world first – to be followed by the third round of increases.
Mike’s main argument is that SA should have cheap electricity in line with our cheaper access to coal. Why is this not so?

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:22:13 +0000

I don’t like expensive electricity as much as the next person, but this article is just BS… 2 minutes on google shows we’re 40% cheaper than average USA prices – or am I missing some giant leap of logic?

I’m all for people exposing high prices and stuff, but they should really use facts to fight the war, not make up sensationalist things to get attention and destroy all their credibility so nobody takes any notice of them anymore – kind of reminds me of the endless streams of meaningless “bandwidth in XYZ country is 100 times cheaper than za” articles on myadsl.

By: James

James — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:58:29 +0000

To be honest price should not really be an issue. My problem is that we will be producing expensive electricity that is a dirty as a dogs arse. The technology exists for the whole country to be powered sustainably (yes its true) and if dirty coal and nuclear is going to be so expensive, we should ditch that technology altogether. We should also not be subsidizing power hungry industry such as aluminium smelters which do not contribute enough to GDP to warrant their extreme electricity usage. Screw Eskom- go green and everyone will benefit (globally, not just in SA)