Why are people so upset with office blocks leaving lights on the whole night?
It's not like
Eskom can save all of that power for use during the day;
Palmiet can only generate a modest amount of power: the 2 turbines are only 200 MW each.
And who else is using lots of power at night? Not household consumers. So there is more than enough to go around at that time.
And who else is using lots of power during the day? Not household consumers. Many of them are at work / school / out-of-the-house.
So the primary contention-period is during early-morning periods (with hot water cylinders, kettles, and microwave ovens going mad) or evening periods (with hot water cylinders, stoves/microwave ovens, televisions
*, and heaters/airconditioning being the primary culprits). And many people are early into their offices (I used to get in before 6am myself sometimes) and leave late (oh those productive captains-of-industry). So I don't think many people would complain about power usage in offices during those periods.
So what's all the complaining really about?"Those people have lights
while we don't. They don't need the lights and we do. They suck."
Back in reality, we should encourage conspicuous consumption by large corporates. I would love them to be sucking down as much juice as possible during the quiet period, as this means more demand -
AND MORE PROFIT - for Eskom. Would you rather have Eskom build all of those new power-plants purely from your tax money, or from the profit they have earned off other people's excess consumption? No one else needs that power in the middle of the night.
* - Have you noticed that the power-consumption-warnings on TV say to turn off all nonessential appliances except your TV? Hmmm...
