Criminals in South Africa are also riding the solar boom, with security experts warning that all solar equipment - panels and batteries - are being targetted.
As homeowners and businesses seek relief from Eskom’s load shedding through alternative power products, criminals are taking advantage of the solar boom – a trend that is now rife across the country.
However, this booming trend to escape load shedding has also attracted scammers and criminals looking for opportunities to take advantage., Rodney Taylor, managing director of Guardian Eye, a company involved in remote security and home automation, said solar is now firmly a hot target for thieves looking to make easy money.
Unlike other hot assets on criminal lists in South Africa – such as vehicles and generators – solar panels and batteries are relatively easy to remove and transport under the radar. “We are now being contracted to secure the solar and battery units with a composite material that is patented and trademarked in South Africa, which prevents the assets from being removed,” he said.He added that many households and businesses are having to microdot solar panels and install hidden transmitters that use a radio frequency that can’t be blocked to make it increasingly difficult to steal these assets.
Mobile network operators like Vodacom and MTN were some of the first to jump on load shedding mitigation efforts to secure their operations during outages. This was done through increased investment in security as well as exposing a major criminal operation in the process, it said.
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