Solar heating is the answer
2007-03-01
IN a letter to the Minister of Public Enterprises in support of additional nuclear plants at Koeberg, the Cape Town Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry has stated that this will not be enough and urges a national campaign to promote solar water heaters.
Says Chamber president Janine Myburgh, “It will take a number of years to bring a new power station into operation and the 2013 date may prove to be optimistic.
“We would like to suggest, therefore, a national campaign to encourage the use of solar water heaters.
“During the months of power insecurity in the Western Cape last year, we became aware of just how much power was being consumed by domestic geysers and industrial boilers and of the potential for savings from the use of solar power,” Ms Myburgh said.
She said that with the abundance of sunlight in this country, it made sense to explore every possible way of promoting and even creating incentives to encourage the installation of solar geysers as they would reduce the demand for electricity and buy time for Eskom’s expansion programme.
“In addition, this form of solar technology is not complex and the installation of the geysers requires little training, making it an ideal field for small business operations.
The major obstacle was the initial capital cost but wide-scale manufacture and use would bring down these costs and banks could be persuaded to create “solar packages” in conjunction with their home loans to make solar geysers more affordable.
A further advantage was that solar geysers were safer, leading, hopefully, to reduced home insurance premiums.
Myburgh also suggested some form of tax incentive for installing solar heating could get the process going.
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