Once you start researching this subject, you realize that every city in every country basically has the same challenges when it comes to electricity. Either there isn't enough electricity, or it's very expensive, or use of energy is completely inefficient. Most seem to be interested in cheaper electricity but not all give a thought to side effects like generating CO2 and what that does to the environment and are often not aware of- or concerned enough to look for alternatives.

Here are a few energy problems that big cities face, and how they deal with these problems.

Regulating time-of-use
As consumers become more sophisticated, they use more electricity than ever before. This is to be expected with our constantly growing global population, so the problem has to do with economies of scale. The use of electricity isn't spread evenly throughout the day. We have peak times when there is a lot of demand on the electricity grid, and off-peak times when there is less demand. This means that an electricity provider needs to have infrastructure in place to supply the maximum demand at the peak of the day, but when it's not peak time, that extended infrastructure stands idle. To regulate this phenomenon cities often switch to time-of-use tariffs. It is a way to "reward" off-peak consumers with cheaper electricity and “punish” peak hour consumers with more expensive electricity.

Outdated technology
Conventional items like electrical stoves & geysers, aluminum cooking pots, incandescent lamps and heater elements all have one thing in common... low efficiency. There is a lot of room for improvement here, and the improvement not only lies in making appliances like heaters more efficient but how about making them unnecessary?

In South Africa for example, most homes are built using river sand & cement for screed; and plaster sand & cement for plastering. From an energy consumption point of view, the materials are not only inefficient but are also expensive to cool in summer and heat in winter. If we used more efficient materials we could come to a point where we hardly need any heating or cooling. Ever hear of volcanic glass fibre?

Developments in LED technology for example could have us all switching to lamps that use 1/10th or less electricity, while doing the same job.

Questionable alternatives
While the computer age has seem tremendous technological advancements, we seem to be more complacent with technological developments in energy. Microwave ovens came into being using much less electricity, but many health gurus are not convinced that food is still the same after being micro waved and it seems they may have reason to be concerned. If you’d like to read up on the origins and hazards of microwave ovens.

Island Heating Effect
Experts call it the island heating effect and it affects big cities. So apart from needing to find new sources of energy and much more energy, a very real challenge is what the energy that we generate do to the areas we live and work in. And so had to discover that our buildings are not necessarily energy efficient, and that huge amounts of electricity goes into heating and cooling these buildings that have a very poor thermal conductivity curve. Bear in mind that when they were designed 50 years ago very few developers thought about this. It is just amazing what we took for granted for so many decades, but then we have the privilege of hind sight, don`t we?

Renewable energy developments
It is fascinating to see what engineers in Australia managed to do with wind generators and a unique combined flywheel technology. Hydrogen as a fuel for cars and airplanes is a technology which was hidden for years but is definitely going to be huge in the next 50 years. The use of permanent magnets to generate huge amounts of electricity is already being done, although expensive to build it’s relatively cheap to maintain. And it does not generate any CO2.

Efficient Electrical Energy Management is geared to help our clients to use electricity much more efficiently and more effectively in an ongoing manner as and when new technology arrives. We also advise clients on alternative alternative solutions to energy needs.

It all starts with measuring; understanding what it means, then control it in order to improve it.