Another road to hell, paved with good intensions? Do the intended recipients know that: (a) Their houses must have direct (piped) water supply – and of good quality - to fill the 100-150-200 litre capacity geysers? (b) They will not have 24/7 hot water: water will cool down over-night, and only lukewarm water will be available in the morning. (Even with cladding @R400-plus, or geyser blanket @R800-plus, the water temperature will be warm, at best). Low-cost (RDP) houses generally do not have any roof-cavity, thus the water will be ice cold by morning. (c) Various components have a limited life-span and are costly to replace: pressure valve, solar collector (panel), etc. (d) If anything else (TV, kettle, lights, etc) is hooked up to the solar collector, it will be kapppowww! and replacement of R3,000-plus can be expected. (e) The panels (and tubes, if this type is also envisaged) are pretty fragile and are easily damaged/broken by heavy rain or hail. If our fearless planners want to avoid a new wave of service delivery protests, it may be a good idea to quickly draw up a budget for a comprehensive communication/education campaign on what the solar geyser can and cannot deliver; what can (and will) go wrong; whose responsibility it will be to repair/replace; and the estimated cost of such repair/replacement. Further, cladding and wrapping with geyser blanket should be undertaken at installation (and factored into the total cost per unit). Another budget item to include is skills development of service providers in the various geographic areas before implementation takes place to meet the repair/replacement needs that will arise from Day 1.

My two 150 litre units were installed 2 years ago. Already bought geyser blankets, replaced a pressure valve, had calcium build-up removed from geysers, and 1 panel ‘died’ in a light hailstorm two months ago (the guarantee has expired, of course, and didn’t cover storm anyway). The nearest service provider is 150km, so the geyser remains non-functional until someone is eventually willing to respond to begging.

Really important that people who want solar installations get good references from people who have had installations, regarding the actual installer. it is easy to market solar equipment and rave about its properties, but as one who has had extensive solar installations in my new house, I would not recommend it, as we have been badly let down by the installer, who has now returned to Germany without finishing the job and left a huge mess. No one can understand what he has done and the importers of the equipment will take no responsibility.

How short the governments memory. Almost three years back the government promised the Geyser manufacturing industry a million unit sales by 2014. These 200,000 I suppose are free while the rest of us have to pay up. How about as an incentive the government puts its money where its mouth is and give us the taxpayer a a full rebate. After all they wasted the money that should have been spent on the infrastructure on political expediency and vote catching.

Well done this is great news, hopefully it will translate in cheaper electricty for main street. (i.e the man in the street)