Repair (Heal) Your World

David Lipschitz , letter in today's Cape Times: Dear Editor Alan Winde's announcement of the Western Cape government's "intention" to create jobs in Western Cape is just that: an intention. When business reads this, it invests. Since 2003, and especially since November, 2008, the local and central governments have been making announcements of their intentions. Companies have invested hundreds of millions of Rands in being ready for these intentions. To no avail. Whilst government is saying one thing, it is enacting every possible legislation to prevent or slow down renewable energy in South Africa. This should be illegal and it is known as Greenwashing. Saying one thing publicly whilst doing something else entirely. As an example, South Africa has 35 rules for generating electricity using the sun. The USA has 6 rules. So this is a warning to any new market entrants. Be very careful with your hard won savings and investments. Many companies have come ...

Hi Peter Thank you for the compliment. We appreciate it and it helps with our work. Are you a member of SAAEA? The first thing people need to do is for us to change the way we think about our capital spend. Eg borrowing R100,000 may have a 20 year repayment period and thinking about it another way, you might be cash positive in year 8, due to the fact that your electricity price is constant, whereas without your system your electricity price would be increasing. But another way to look at this, is that if you can spend the same amount of money per month producing your own electricity, as you are spending on electricity at the moment, then you are cash neutral in year one and in year two you are cash positive, making approximately R4000 profit in year two from become a power station supplying electricity to the grid. If you are paying R1200 per month for electricity in the City of Cape Town, then if your rate is R1.50 per kWh, then you are using 800 kWh per month of electricity...