Solar and water tank adopters are forcing government to adapt or die.
In the breach left by failing local government services, citizens have been making alternative plans for years, buying solar panels to get off the electricity grid, digging boreholes to tap underground water and purchasing water tanks to help them get through water outages and throttling.
Frustrated by load-shedding, South Africans imported R17.5 billion of solar panels, inverters and lithium-ion batteries in the first nine months of 2024, according to the deputy minister of energy and electricity, Samantha Graham-Maré. And to alleviate water shortages, they are drilling 80 000 to 100 000 boreholes across the country annually, according to the department of water and sanitation, with only 282 630 boreholes actually registered (as of October 2024 in the National Groundwater Archive).
