Abstract
The heating of water for domestic purposes is an important component of human daily activities, especially during cold weather conditions. In South Africa, it is estimated that households spend an average of 40% of their electricity on domestic water heating alone. This alone threatens energy affordability and access due to the high cost of electricity. The South African government seeing that the majority of low-income households do not afford electricity, introduced solar water heating (SWH) geysers as a possible affordable energy alternative technology. The massive roll-out of the solar water geysers began in 2008 managed to install 443 486 SWH geysers. This desktop study is envisaged to evaluate the implementation of the strategy and ends by investigating the effectiveness of the SWH geysers on reducing household grid energy demand between 2009 and 2017. The results of this study will illustrate the effectiveness, failures, successes or future approaches evolving around this technology.