Today South Africa faces an electricity crisis. Just yesterday, I had a two hour long power cut during the day and as a result I was not able to get much work done. Eskom come out and tell us that they are going to cut the power but what we want to hear is how they are planning to solve this problem which seems to be getting worse and worse.

The is continued talk about more nuclear plant being built in South Africa to generate more electricity and upgrading of the current infrastructure to meet the increased demand. Not to mention the recruitment drive to get the right people with the right skills to runs the countries power supply.

Now has someone thought outside the box at alternative power supplies? There are other ways to generate electricity. I am not an expert engineer on all the technicalities of electricity generation but I have a decent enough brain to figure out what is there and what it can do.

For starters, there are very few places in the world that have as much sunlight as South Africa, I stay in Cape Town, where now in summer the suns sets at 8pm giving us ample hours of sunshine per day. Why then not develop a solar powered national infrastructure that can store all this sunshine we have and convert it to electricity. One would think with the amount of sunshine in South Africa, there would be more solar panels on households in the country. I understand that the cost of the panels is a bit high but one has to look at it as a long term investment which will result in their monthly electricity bill coming down. Most people with solar panels use them to directly heat their geysers as geysers consume a lot of electricity. Now if the country can go on a massive drive and put up solar panels on the roofs of all the houses in a community, that community would be able to generate some of its own electricity. Not knowing the exact technicalities, this to me seems like something that can be done. The solar panels can all then store the power in one central place and this can then be re-distributed to the households.

On the other hand, there is a very long coast line in South Africa and wind can also be used to generate electricity similar to the way that solar energy is used. Why then not setup the ‘windmills’ along the coastal areas of South Africa and store this energy they produce and make electricity. Just standing on the beach in Cape Town, one can feel the amount of wind hitting against you. Now let us use this ‘wind’ to generate electricity.

I am sure the two alternatives I have mentioned above can work and there can easily be other means to make more electricity for South Africa. We do not want to be plunged into a country of darkness. No power will seriously cripple the country and we do not want to see a South Africa on crutches.