Ellies in power saving drive

JSE-listed company, Ellies Holdings (ELI), which manufactures and distributes electronic products related to television reception, says it has completed its first Eskom contract to remove 45 Megawatts (MW) from the national grid.

Project Power Save is a joint initiative between Ellies Renewable Energy (a division of Ellies) and Eskom, which, by utilising Ellies’ existing installation logistics capacity, intends to reduce the amount of electricity consumed across the nation.

This will be achieved by installing geyser timers and replacing incandescent and halogen light bulbs and showerheads – at no cost to the homeowner – with CFL’s, LED’s and energy efficient showerheads.

Implementation of the first phase began on February 6, 2012 and Ellies says it completed the project ahead of schedule, on March 27, 2012, with just over 270,000 homes visited.

The group says it is also empowering members of the community by training and employing them as installers. To date, almost 2,900 individuals were trained and employed.

Ellies started a new extension of phase one of this project on April 1, 2012, which is set to end in June. The extension aims to further reduce energy consumption by an additional 30MW.

This extension of the project aims to visit roughly 140,000 additional homes and employ a further 500 installers, the group said.