A sensationalist headline. The concerning part is that snippet of information is that it comes from City Power, Joburg municipality’s electricity company.
Its a combination of many storms. Failing and grossly undermaintained infrastructure, lack of capacity to attend to breakdowns, theft and vandalism of that same infrastructure and a budget that is woefully inadequate for the ever increasing failures for all of the listed reasons.
There are an exponentially increasing number of solar “installers” in the last few months as the general community jump on the band wagon. The quotes have diminished as has the hit rate on those estimates.
What has increased, is the number of calls relating to systems that are not working properly. Insurers are quite rightly pushing for a COC for their customer’s installation. The standards for solar installations are also being updated on a regular basis. It is a big capital outlay and customers are well within their rights to go shopping. The trend seems to be that cheaper is the way to go, after all, there are many products on the market and the pricing is getting better as the market gets filled with more product options from inverters to batteries to panels.
The unattractive side is the penchant to offer products that are not approved and supported. This coupled with a few non-compliant installations leaves the purchaser with a bigger cost after the cheaper road was taken.
If City Power are publicly stating that they have a grid on the verge of collapse, you still need to look at your home and business requirements more seriously than ever.
This could very well mean that the old Afrikaans adage that ‘goed koop is duur koop’ becomes very appropriate for our industry.
It is a lot of hard earned money. Take the time, do the research, get value for money.
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/506522-joburg-electricity-network-on-brink-of-collapse-city-power.html?utm_source=newsletter