4 - Electricity Consumption in Brazil and South Africa: Distribution and Prices

Summary

Citizens expect their states to provide basic electricity services, of acceptable price and quality. Wind and solar power have affected that by making electricity accessible for additional consumers, especially through local generation of solar power (distributed solar power), even as their prices have often been much higher than alternative electricity sources. This chapter examines how the Brazilian and South African states used wind and solar power to provide electricity services to their household and industry consumers. As electricity access was nearly universal in Brazil, wind and solar power’s primary contribution was to supply grid-scale electricity, along with a small number of solar installations for remote consumers. Growing controversies focus on the subsidies to small-scale generation and increased urban self-provision. In South Africa, wind and solar power entered a highly unequal electricity system – 32 companies used 40 percent of the electricity while the apartheid government had left Black South Africans unserved – and have done little to redress the inequalities. The same coalitions fought over the true price of electricity options as prices rose precipitously.