morepower

City of Tshwane also allows feed-in, but you must be registered, have a bi-directional meter installed and pay a certain fee for the privilege of feeding in. You get literal cents per kWh and have to be a net user to get paid. Not worth it for me, for now, though I'm sure there are some cases where people find it worth while. Broadly speaking not a real incentive for most people at present, though. CoT also comes knocking when there are sudden changes in your electricity use, or if there is a sudden change and you still have an old meter, they sometimes just assume that it's your meter that's faulty and then they replace it with a prepaid meter. Edit: Sorry, misread and just made a small correction.

The internal complex system makes this a bit opaque, I think. As I understand it, feeding into the grid (i.e. the municipality's side) without being registered to do so is illegal in most municipalities (if they are the electricity provider). From a good faith perspective, one can understand this, as they'd want to keep track of what is going in and out of their grid for a number of reasons (like any electricity utility all over the world, I think). Unfortunately, the municipalities in SA have previously not been too keen on anyone feeding into the grid, as they (mis)understand this as loss of revenue - because their main source of income is often the selling of electricity. They are so afraid of it that they don't even want to listen to explanations that solar customers feeding in won't get paid on a one-to-one tariff for what they feed in and because the municipality will be selling our feed-in, they'd still make good money on it. This is why we've not seen serious regulation and action to allow selling into the grid, with the exception of CT, which woke up to how great this could be a while ago, and seems to be trying to enable more people to do so more quickly and at better rates). Getting paid less per kWh of what you feed into the grid (as opposed to what you pay for buying from the grid) makes sense from an infrastructural point of view. The electricity you generate is ultimately still carried over municipal infrastructure (theoretically, at least), and the municipality still needs to maintain and improve that infrastructure, so it's not that weird to me that those who want to generate could be expected to carry some cost for the maintenance of the grid (within reason, of course). For residential generators, this means you get paid less per kWh selling than buying. Feeding in without being registered to do so is considered meter tampering, because you are doing something with your meter that the municipality doesn't allow (that is, making it turn backwards, slowing it down or stopping its intended operation by some means). You can be fined for this if you are caught. Some people are willing to take the risk and manage it carefully so that the municipality will not know what they are doing. It is still illegal, though. What also worries me is that this kind of thing could lead to an over correction from government that will result in clampdowns on solar installations connected to the grid at all. But maybe I'm just paranoid. Having said all that, we need swift changes to this situation, because as someone mentioned here, and as has been mentioned lots of times on this entire forum, loadshedding could be a lot lower during the day if all solar owners were allowed to feed into the grid. This could mean more maintenance on the power plants could be done during the day, necessitating fewer shutdowns when the sun isn't out... I'm not willing to risk the fine and trouble for being caught feeding into the grid right now, but if it were made legal (and administratively easy) to feed into the grid, I'd happily do so. Hell, at this stage just knowing that it could help businesses get a bit of a breather would be enough for me to give my generated electricity to my municipality for free.

Yes. 8kW Deye and 2 x 10.1kWh Alpha ESS batteries, with 3.2kW array of 8 x JA Solar 410kW panels. I've had the inverter, first battery and panels for about 13 months now. No complaints whatsoever. All have been great.

Thanks so much, @Steve87, for coming out and helping me with these. Your installation is so incredibly neat and tidy, and the attention to detail to make sure that the new battery's installation perfectly matches the existing setup was really appreciated. In addition, I feel like I've learned an absolute tonne just by speaking to you while you were here. Many, many thanks!

Thank you, Jacques. Will do.

Hi everyone. I had a system installed by Solar Advice about a year ago, and I'm very happy with it. (8kW Deye inverter, 3280kW array, 10.1kWh Alpha ESS battery). I scraped together the funds to add another battery (Alpha ESS 10.1kWh), but unfortunately, the sub-contractor used by Solar Advice just hasn't bothered to get back to me after my request for a quote to install the additional battery. I tried contacting other installers, but none of them get back to me, or their communication is spotty at best and it certainly hasn't inspired confidence. Could anyone recommend reliable installers in Pretoria? It's such a simple job - the new battery simply needs to be installed (which comes down to two brackets on the wall, really) and it needs to be connected to the one that is already in place, with the requisite parameter changes on the inverter. I would have done it myself, but this is expensive hardware, so I don't want to take any chances. I'd really appreciate any recommendations!