Hyades

My take on this subject, after reading through the link I shared. Schedule 2 of Electricity regulation Act says that installation less than 100kw are exempted from registration. Meaning it is not compulsory for house holds to register, not sure if there is any house hold with over 100kw of solar install. Eskom or Municipality, have no mandate behind the meter on the customer's premises. There is no statutory requirements for solar system with capacity under 100kw to register with any distributor, CP, COJ included. So! People, if you have a letter from CP/COJ saying they are going to convert you to post paid, call it a bluff and just ignore them.

If Eksdom threaten to cut people with solar from the grid, mission accomplished - no need to ask them to disconnect you - lol 😃

I'm on pre-paid, direct with Eskom. When the day comes that they want to move me over to post-paid, and/or register, on that day I will tell their technicians to disconnect me at the street. Everything inside of that, is not their concern. My COC has noting to do with them, and all the wiring aft of the street, has nothing to do with them.

I dont know about soon but It will definitely happen. I went to COJ to pay the quote but alas, it was not on their system. Went to citipower and citipower has the quote on their system. So the system at coj seems to be a mess. The lady at CP said she will send the quote again. Its one of those things where you have to keep following up or else nothing gets done
The last step is basically the payment of that quote. Then they can come remove their equipment.

There's this
This makes little sense to me, because buying lots of prepaid upfront does not save you money because of the sliding scale. It is cheaper to buy a small amount each month.

Anyhoo... this looks like the City are disconnecting, then charging the fee for reconnection. In some cases.

I say "some cases" because I have a registered system and a pre-paid meter. There are other folks in my street with PV, and some of them are on pre-paid too. Nobody has disconnected any of us, though some are planning to disconnect from the grid.

The City has said that there will be disconnections for residents who do not co-operate with City Power staff, and that there will be penalties on over due amounts. Certainly they can already start applying interest on overdue amounts, but in cases where meters are bridged it's hard for them to know exactly how much you owe them.

City Power gave a deadline in June - for people who have PV and pre-paid. Possibly Eskom have some deadline for March.

Off course you need a CoC for your house, for insurance reasons, if anything goes wrong, also when you sell, you require a CoC to be done. This however, has nothing to do with Eskom/COJ, what happens inside your property, aft of their connection in the street, is not their indaba. Yes, off course they can dictate what they want if you feed into the grid (their network), this also, is normal, and understandable. My concern/issue, is that I don't want to move from a prepaid system that I've been on for many years, working flawlessly, to a postpaid system. When that day comes, when they knock on my door, I will tell them, disconnect me from the grid.

Only if you want to connect to their network. Otherwise it has nothing to do with them. They have no say what’s inside your yard otherwise if you have no grid connection.
Also goes with registration. Eskom clearly states that grid tied homes must be registered if they have PV installed.

I can give you wording, but not, at this time, book chapter and verse. Remember that this is City Power, not any other supplier
“All residential customers who would be willing to invest in embedded generation with the purpose of supplementing their electricity supply from City Power, will have to be on a time-of-use conventional tariff structure. If they are currently on a prepaid structure, they will be required to migrate to the time-of-use conventional tariff structure.”
My argument, when the time comes, will be "fine. Please move me to a TOU structure". And then I will hope they don't do that because the reseller's tariff is next to nothing, the fixed fees (per COJ's tariff book) are even higher than for post-paid, and I will have to pay for the new meter.

I'm referring to COJ regulations. If you're not supplied by City Power then these probably don't apply to you. But check carefully. I am a City Power customer, and I have the combination they say is not allowed. I think there are many cases of the left hand not knowing what the right hand did. My system is registered. I hid nothing from City Power and declared that I had a pre-paid meter. Yet here I am...
This remains the case with City Power. Prepaid users pay more per kWh. But they pay much lower fixed fees.
OK, City Power want to move people with PV systems off of pre-paid. If you don't have PV, do have pre-paid, have been buying and haven't tampered with the installation then nothing changes. If you are not supplied by City Power then their statements that we are discussing here have no relevance to you.
The controversial aspect is that they are saying that we can't have PV and pre-paid. But that is not a new regulation. I don't know if my meter is "smart" or not. It doesn't do any of the things that smart meters are reported to do, but maybe that's just because they haven't enabled those features where I live. I suspect that because it is not bi-directional it records any power coming from the inverter as if it came from the grid. But if that is happening then it is, as you say, cents. I don't worry because any remedy is going to cost me more.
Anecdotal evidence, from a conversation with a City Power engineer, is that they usually uncover the combination of PV and pre-paid because somebody complains that their meter is eating credit too fast, and they find that it is a pre-paid meter linked to a PV system that is exporting. Which suggests that they are not bi-directional. But they still do supply electricity.
My own attitude is that if I connect a system that has the ability to feed back to their grid, then they have a legitimate interest in that.

I switched to prepaid because the guesstimate readings were a problem.
I needed a predictable bill and not estimate readings every month.
I need a system that is not open to abuse.
I need a system that cuts me off when there is a problem of excessive usage (eg geyser gets leak and stuck on for a month).
Prepaid is the correct solution for me.
Prepaid is cheaper for lower consumers of electricity.
The argument from CityPower is that prepaid was never meant for affluent suburbs.
There are no bylaws that enforce "affluent only".
I'm "middle income" - does that now count as "affluent".
CityPower trying to increase revenue -
CityPower's own analysis on 2024-03-19 shows:
R20,7 billion revenue, cost of supply was R20,2 billion, surplus (profit) of R495m (2.5%)
expect a 15% surplus (profit) on sales of electricity - R3.1b
getting 2.5% surplus (profit) on sales of electricity R495m
total energy losses (non-payment/theft) were ~27% in FY2122 - R5.6b
NERSA benchmark for energy losses is 10%-12%
Reducing losses from 27% to 15% would increase surplus (profit) from R495m to R3.5b
Just do your job and reduce "energy losses" to NERSA benchmark and stop trying to punish paying customers.
Only 4% of Alexandra, Mountain View, Tshepisong, River Park, Pennyville and Vlakfontein, etc pay for their electricity…
Recent efforts increased this to 11% payment rate.
https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/city-power-collects-7-more-revenue-from-customers-in-alex/
https://www.sowetan.co.za/news/south-africa/2024-06-12-a-number-of-city-power-customers-dont-pay-for-electricity/

CityPower must f**** off until  they have reduced theft to NERSA recommended levels.

See attached CoJ-2024-25-ELECTRICITY SERVICES-proposed-tariffs.pdf for details of revenue, revenue losses, etc.
CoJ-2024-25-ELECTRICITY SERVICES-proposed-tariffs.pdf

I'm on pre-paid, direct with Eskom. When the day comes that they want to move me over to post-paid, and/or register, on that day I will tell their technicians to disconnect me at the street. Everything inside of that, is not their concern. My COC has noting to do with them, and all the wiring aft of the street, has nothing to do with them.

I'm on pre-paid, direct with Eskom. When the day comes that they want to move me over to post-paid, and/or register, on that day I will tell their technicians to disconnect me at the street. Everything inside of that, is not their concern. My COC has noting to do with them, and all the wiring aft of the street, has nothing to do with them.

Requesting a disconnection should have nothing to do with your CoC or inverter.

Cool.
Thank you. I'll play a bit more with my timer.

That makes sense - only YOU can really determine if its worth doing it. As an example on my end is setup like this - no grid charge at all

Ahhh ok.
 
Yeah, I thought it best to try and keep the batteries above a certain SOC, even on rainy days, as one never knows when a bout of load-shedding could last potentially longer, or something goes wrong.
Normally, my batteries are back to 100% before 11:00 in the morning, and they stay that way until around 17:00 eish, when the sun no longer does it's thing. Well now in the winter months, this is what I'm finding.
In the morning when we wake up, the battery is around the 52/54% SOC mark. Sometimes, its on 50% then obviously, the grid had kept it there. (I recently moved the SOC from 50% to 40% in that time slot)
Am I playing it too safe you think?
What do you suggest one sets the grid charging to?

Howdy,
 
I recently had 16x 460w panels (2x 8 strings) installed.
1x 8kw SunSynk inverter.
2x 5,5kw Hubble AM-2 batteries.
 
Sofar so good. Busy reading a lot, and getting to grips with all the features, and settings. Hope to learn a lot more here.
 
PS, installation is in Fourways, Gauteng.
 
Chris

Howdy,
 
I recently had 16x 460w panels (2x 8 strings) installed.
1x 8kw SunSynk inverter.
2x 5,5kw Hubble AM-2 batteries.
 
Sofar so good. Busy reading a lot, and getting to grips with all the features, and settings. Hope to learn a lot more here.
 
PS, installation is in Fourways, Gauteng.
 
Chris