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Everywhere you go in China, people are riding e-bikes. Most of these electric motorcycles can reach more than 20 kilometres on a single charge, making these scooters perfect for commute. Charging an e-bike in China will cost you somewhere in the vicinity of R1.80, and the best part is that an e-bike costs about as much as you would pay for a new smart phone!
I live in a duplex apartment in Nanjing and have two air conditioners. During summer I leave them running every day. My electricity bill is about R850 each month during summer. Without the air conditioners running my electricity bill is negligible.
It saddens me that poor South Africans can’t even afford to have e-bikes due to the rising cost of electricity in South Africa. E-bikes cost next to nothing, is environmentally friendly, and enables even the poorest of poor here in China. Unfortunately the electricity in South Africa is way too expensive for it to work.
The good news is that the South African government is trying to sort out the supply of electricity by looking at erecting more power plants. In business, when supply increases, demand decreases, resulting in lower prices. At least, that’s the theory.
According to reports it will cost South Africa about R40bn to build the power plants. No doubt the government needs to upgrade the supply grid, but who will end up paying the 40 billion if they eventually do build enough nuclear power plants to generate 9600MW of baseload electricity? In other words, where will the money come from?
The answer is simple. Raise the price of electricity even higher.
So is there another option that might be more viable?
According to Forbes, no other country is capable of building as much nuclear per capita as China is. In the most pro-nuclear country in the world with the most relaxed regulatory regime, the nuclear industry is being outstripped by the wind industry.
The complete article can be read here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/08/22/which-is-more-scalable-nuclear-energy-or-wind-energy/
So my question is, with electricity being so cheap in China, why isn’t South Africa following their example? The entire world is turning towards wind energy because it’s cheaper. Why is South Africa still interested in nuclear energy?
