If you've ever walked across a carpeted floor before touching a metal doorknob, or pulled a cashmere sweater over your head, or rubbed a pet cat the wrong way, you will know that static electricity is one of the most powerful sources of natural energy known to man, not to mention cat.
Static electricity is caused by an imbalance in the positive and negative charges of the ions and electrons that...hey, who cares? The point is, it's electricity, and right now, we need as much of the stuff as we can get.
Because static electricity is so easy to generate in the home environment, providing you have access to a carpet, doorknob, cashmere sweater or cat, it is widely regarded as an alternative to other alternative sources of electrical energy, such as solar panels, wind-power, biofuels, or emigration to Australia.
In fact, as far back as 1998, Eskom presented a White Paper on Static Electricity to the South African Government, but it was unfortunately rejected because it was just a piece of white paper with nothing on it.
Despite this setback, Eskom's "power crisis" team has been hard at work experimenting with static electricity as a possible solution to load-shedding. Just this week, scientists at Megawatt Park managed to harness enough static electricity to power a small pop-up toaster, simply by repeatedly petting a cat in the laboratory.
As soon as they figure out where to plug the toaster in, they should be ready to roll-out millions of nano-watts of static electricity to households and businesses across our power-hungry nation.
