The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that a small Free State municipality is not allowed to use private solar power to reduce load-shedding.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/488621-eskom-blocks-town-from-using-own-solar-power-to-avoid-load-shedding.html

Not agenda driven?  🥵

1 minute ago, Superfly said:

Wow... just Wow!  I so wish we can vote the ANC out before they destroy the country completely!

Next, they are going to tell us that we cannot use our solar system during load shedding.

Soon ANC going to charge us  for the sun hours we use 

2 minutes ago, Superfly said:

It's running through my property.. it's mine!

LOL, your property but you are taxed on it for life, every month they tax you for your property and any improvements you make at your cost. Sound normal?  No, but hey the people just accept it and pay in a so called "free Democracy"
Read a bit deeper and find out that if you dig in your property and find a diamond or gold, that immediately belongs to whatever private mining company has the government approved mining rights in that area.
 

20 minutes ago, Superfly said:

Going off topic .. so brace yourselves.. LOL

Another thing that bothers me is this 

https://www.capetown.gov.za/City-Connect/Apply/Municipal-services/Water-and-sanitation/apply-to-sink-a-borehole-or-wellpoint-or-use-an-alternative-source-of-water

If I want to use water beneath my property why does the govt have to know?  downstream? WTH .. It's running through my property.. it's mine!

That's where you have it wrong. Water constitutionally belongs to the people of South Africa. It's a scarce resource and access needs to be managed. Imagine a farmer putting up a major dam on his land and the 50 farmers down stream are then left without.

7 hours ago, Peter V said:

That's where you have it wrong. Water constitutionally belongs to the people of South Africa. It's a scarce resource and access needs to be managed. Imagine a farmer putting up a major dam on his land and the 50 farmers down stream are then left without.

Also different countries have different rights attached to land ownership. In most of the USA you own effectively to the center of the earth, so if there's oil or gold or shale that can be fracked then that is yours, and anybody who wants to extract it has to buy from you the rights to extract whatever it is. 

In South Africa, the law  says you don't own rights downwards or upwards above a certain hight. So you can't insist that British Airways pay you everytime they overfly your house, nor do mineral rights automatically become yours.

Bore holes are a grey area in Johannesburg. COJ is concerned about depletion of the water table , but right now seems unable to progress past being concerned. They do require that you put up a sign indicating that you are using borehole water. In CT there is a properly functioning government. 

8 hours ago, zsde said:

LOL, your property but you are taxed on it for life, every month they tax you for your property and any improvements you make at your cost. Sound normal?  No, but hey the people just accept it and pay in a so called "free Democracy"

This is a quite common arrangement in many countries. Cities need money to provide services to residents, so they have to apply taxes, which is what property rates really are. They can't apply a flat tax because that would impact negatively on many residents, and so they charge you on the basis of market value of your land & improvements. 

The problem is the valuation. All houses in my street, not sold in the last five years have been slapped with the same, high value. We're told that this the work of property valuators. A house recently sold is deemed to be worth the selling price. All others get the value assigned by these valuators. So you need to object, motivate your objection, and propose a new value. 

This process worked 5 years ago, and in the end the City and I disagreed by 10K, which makes a small difference to my rates. 

Most people pay no attention to this, and will get a nasty surprise in July. 

OUTA have been telling us that we are being robbed, that they have appointed a valuator who has  database of every property in the city, and will supply you with a valuation certificate for a fee. 

The fee certainly is robbery, no matter what else is going on, because the certificate just confirms the City's valuation. 

Either OUTA's appointed valuator are the same bunch who did the valuations for the City, or the City's valuations are entirely reasonable. OUTA deny both. 

Of course in Jhb we see the infrastructure ever worsening. So we don't feel that there's a contract implied by which we give the city money and they in turn provide services. 

Edited April 22, 20233 yr by Bobster.

Re ground water. Here's an interesting article that shows how interlinked watery things are.

EG "Aquifers are also the source of the core flow in most rivers in the Western Cape. Depleting the aquifers reduces flow in rivers." So the COCT, with it's duty to supply potable water to the residents, and indeed the WC government have a legitimate interest in boreholes.

Edited April 23, 20233 yr by Bobster.
Forgot to insert link

21 hours ago, zsde said:

The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that a small Free State municipality is not allowed to use private solar power to reduce load-shedding.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/488621-eskom-blocks-town-from-using-own-solar-power-to-avoid-load-shedding.html

Not agenda driven?  🥵

I saw this reported. It puzzles me because it's hardly the first such scheme to buy power from some source and then feed it into a municipal grid. Johannesburg did it for a couple of years with the Kelvin station (now privately owned). Cape Town famously has Steenbras, but that goes back donkey's years, and so the paper work would have been sorted out years ago. 

On the face of it it seems that some paperwork was missing, and that the company involved exceeded the contracted period of the trial. 

And, of course, Eskom are trying to woo IPPs, and saying that there's already a mechanism by which farmers can put up solar panels on fields and some 3rd party can aggregate that output and feed it into a city isn't going to make them keener to invest.

Unless this is about setting precedent (and at least two more similar cases are waiting to be heard), why crush this butterfly on a wheel?
 

This is the press release by the municipality.
Can't add the Judgement PDF as it exceeds the 3mb limit. You are welcome to download it though from my dropbox link or from the link provided in the press release.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7pxgss7b95ciyp/Judgement RFS Eskom 20230420.pdf?dl=0

RFS Press Release 2023 04 20.pdf

Edited April 23, 20233 yr by zsde

Eskom let the cat out of the bag here. Load-shedding has nothing to do with maintaining a stable grid?

These guys were NOT drawing power from Eskom (during load-shedding times), but providing power from their own solar infrastructure.

So please explain what the "unknown" purpose of load-shedding is, if not to maintain a stable grid in reduced generation periods??

They appear to be a spiteful mafia monopoly.

So careful people with Solar, you are Voiding too, and Eskum will get you. 🙄

 

On 2023/04/22 at 4:37 PM, Peter V said:

Water constitutionally belongs to the people of South Africa. It's a scarce resource and access needs to be managed.

That rag called the constitution, is not worth the paper it's written on. If read carefully you will notice ALL rights and powers are put into the hands of a few thugs (um politicians). The people can and do have no rights at the stroke of a pen, as we saw in the last Covert19 PLANdemic.

As for water been a scarce resource, this is fabricated propaganda. Most of the worlds surface is covered by water.

Many decades ago when I lived and worked in Cape Town in the medical business I dealt with reverse osmosis system in the renal field. I spoke with a membrane manufacture in Somerset West (if I remember correctly) who exports products worldwide. He told me about the offer his company made to the CoCT to provide desalinated potable water for pennies on the kl. The CoCT flatly turned down the offer. Talk about agenda's and ulterior motives. 🤔

 

Not picking on you Peter, just get annoyed when thinking about the loss of freedoms, and the power in the hands of a few incompetent cANCer nuts. 👍

11 hours ago, TimCam said:

Many decades ago when I lived and worked in Cape Town in the medical business I dealt with reverse osmosis system in the renal field. I spoke with a membrane manufacture in Somerset West (if I remember correctly) who exports products worldwide. He told me about the offer his company made to the CoCT to provide desalinated potable water for pennies on the kl. The CoCT flatly turned down the offer. Talk about agenda's and ulterior motives. 🤔

 

A technology I understand and have implemented in many industrial applications over the years. It is not cheap to implement, membranes have a finite life and roughly speaking constitute around 80% of the initial installation cost. RO plants are also quite energy hungry.with high pressure pumps. The RO company was based in Stellenbosch and as I recall was started by a bunch of Stellenbosch Univerity whizz kids.

I will differ with you on rights to water but agree on the total lack of competence or integrity in managing the resource these days.

On 2023/04/22 at 2:53 PM, zsde said:

The Johannesburg High Court has ruled that a small Free State municipality is not allowed to use private solar power to reduce load-shedding.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/488621-eskom-blocks-town-from-using-own-solar-power-to-avoid-load-shedding.html

Not agenda driven?  🥵

IANAL, but it seems Eskom did not win, the case was dismissed for "not furnishing application not properly" - a technical issue.

See
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Rural-Maintencance-Mafube-municipality-vs-Eskom.pdf

Summary: Urgent application – Rule 7 Uniform Rules of Court – Authority to initiate proceedings on behalf of Municipality not furnished on the Court Application not properly before the Court and stands to be dismissed.

Edited April 24, 20233 yr by system32