system32

Do I have to register this tiny UPS + PV system for my router?
Please advise.

Only if you grid feeding.

If you not grid feeding, then you have a UPS with PV.
There is no requirement to register a UPS.

I have this below UPS which came with a small PV and I use for my router.
Do I need to register this with CityPower?

Unethical and unfair to disconnect you because you don't buy for a few months.
Then to demand R12,000 to reconnect is completely outrageous.
I'm also on CoJ pre-paid.
Fortunately I'd heard of this disconnect issue, so I decided to purchase a small amount every month.
No issues so far with CoJ.

My 2c worth:
>account side of things
The post paid "Service Fee" is for meter reading which require someone to read your meter monthly.
On pre-paid there is no meter reader hence no "Service Fee"

>fixed up front fee per month for all pre-paid meters
This is referred to as a "Network Fee"

In order add a fixed fee to pre-paid, they need to align the pre-paid and post-paid rates, both the bands and R/kWh.
a) CoJ Pre-paid has 3 bands and post-paid has 5 bands - needs to be made the same
b) CoJ Pre-paid units (R/kWh) are more expensive than post-paid - needs to be made the same
c) "Service Fee" is not applicable to pre-paid as there is no meter reading.

d) Implementation of fixed fee.
Since with pre-paid you don't have an account CoJ would have to add the fixed fee of R616,37 on the first purchase of the month.  The R616.37 can't be added to the rates bill as the electricity bill is often separate from the rates bill for tenants. You would need to by R616.37 before getting  your first kWh of electricity.

e) Only 4% of Alex [and other township] residents paying for electricity - City Power
https://ewn.co.za/2020/09/09/only-4-of-alex-residents-paying-for-power-city-power
CoJ need to fix this township non-payment issue.
CoJ wanted to just introduce a pre-paid fixed fee without fixing (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e) making it unfair.
If they fix (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e) then I'll OK with paying a pre-paid fixed fee - otherwise it's just a tax on middle class and they will lose votes and increase non-payment.
 
 

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 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 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 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

There is a regulation that says that a registered SSEG installation cannot be paired with a prepaid meter, and there's another that requires registration of SSEG. I thought that CP might be taking a chance here, but after some digging it looks like the regulations may support what they want to do. One consequence of what CP propose is that they will uncover a lot of unregistered PV systems. From there they can move to TOU tariffs, which will have even higher fixed fees.
Please don't think I derive any pleasure from this.

Its actually not mandated by COJ to be moved to Postpaid, Citipower cant make that decision without COJ. And the fees are 1400 rand, not 900ish.
Here is my bill for the month on Postpaid.

I am currently busy with the process and created a thread to document it here : https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/coj-off-grid-process.1329707/
You can sell a house without a grid connection, just depends on how much in demand it will be. Its a double edged sword, some buyers will want the connection, but with the rising fixed charges and cost per unit it is also possible that quite a lot would welcome the fact that they pay less on their bill.
Reconnection is about 12k yes. In my case its a tiny fee as 8 months of being off-grid will cover the 12k if I reconnect later on. So its a no brainer, 12k is nothing in the grand scheme of things considering every year I was dropping 16.3k in fixed charges alone.
Also, Engineers sign off is still required by COJ. You are confusing Eskom with Citipower. Eskom relaxed their rules, not CP. COCT doesnt need an engineer also If i am not mistaken.
At the moment, the individuals who registered seem to be getting the letters to be moved to Postpaid. The ones who have not registered have gotten no such notices from what I have gathered.

I have 2 geysers.
Main is a Solar thermosiphon with electrical backup - installed in 2010.
The cottage is a is a regular 100l Kwikot (installed 2021).
I have timers on both that limit electricity from 10am - 15pm - I use the geysers as a "heat battery"

4 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

For 2025, the CoJ rate includes the fixed fee.
This year, we added additional appliances (more TV, more PC, more heaters) so the load has climbed.
In Oct I added another 5KWh AM2 (total 25kWh battery bank) to reduce my grid usage (was ~30% cheaper than initial purchase).
Thinking of adding another 8 panel string to cater for winter's shorter days.
In Nov 2025 we had a grid failure that lasted 15h overnight - no impact to me.
Biggest issue seems to be rain weather ☹️ which prevents full charging - at least the grass is green.
Nov 2025, changed my minimum SoC to 25%.
20% seemed to cause the AM2's to trigger a strange charge/discharge pattern from grid.

Hubble AM2 - State of Health:
battery/Pack_1/StateofHealth/state, payload=100 (new)
battery/Pack_2/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_3/StateofHealth/state, payload=93
battery/Pack_4/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_5/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
Just need them to last another 2-3 years to recover my battery costs.
Overall, I'm very happy and it's still one of the best investment I've made.

4 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

For 2025, the CoJ rate includes the fixed fee.
This year, we added additional appliances (more TV, more PC, more heaters) so the load has climbed.
In Oct I added another 5KWh AM2 (total 25kWh battery bank) to reduce my grid usage (was ~30% cheaper than initial purchase).
Thinking of adding another 8 panel string to cater for winter's shorter days.
In Nov 2025 we had a grid failure that lasted 15h overnight - no impact to me.
Biggest issue seems to be rain weather ☹️ which prevents full charging - at least the grass is green.
Nov 2025, changed my minimum SoC to 25%.
20% seemed to cause the AM2's to trigger a strange charge/discharge pattern from grid.

Hubble AM2 - State of Health:
battery/Pack_1/StateofHealth/state, payload=100 (new)
battery/Pack_2/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_3/StateofHealth/state, payload=93
battery/Pack_4/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_5/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
Just need them to last another 2-3 years to recover my battery costs.
Overall, I'm very happy and it's still one of the best investment I've made.

4 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

For 2025, the CoJ rate includes the fixed fee.
This year, we added additional appliances (more TV, more PC, more heaters) so the load has climbed.
In Oct I added another 5KWh AM2 (total 25kWh battery bank) to reduce my grid usage (was ~30% cheaper than initial purchase).
Thinking of adding another 8 panel string to cater for winter's shorter days.
In Nov 2025 we had a grid failure that lasted 15h overnight - no impact to me.
Biggest issue seems to be rain weather ☹️ which prevents full charging - at least the grass is green.
Nov 2025, changed my minimum SoC to 25%.
20% seemed to cause the AM2's to trigger a strange charge/discharge pattern from grid.

Hubble AM2 - State of Health:
battery/Pack_1/StateofHealth/state, payload=100 (new)
battery/Pack_2/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_3/StateofHealth/state, payload=93
battery/Pack_4/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
battery/Pack_5/StateofHealth/state, payload=92
Just need them to last another 2-3 years to recover my battery costs.
Overall, I'm very happy and it's still one of the best investment I've made.

3 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

In 2023, 79.7% of my kWh came from Solar / Self generated.
20.3% comes from grid - mostly cloudy days and winter (where we use electric heaters)

Outages > 4h:

We experienced a total of 417h18m/17d9h18m in 180 incidents of outages (load shedding)
We were not impacted by outages.
The grid meter readings from the CoJ Meter and the consumption is from a Hiking DDS238-2 WiFi meter.
The decrease in self generation can be attributed to me changing the SoC threshold from 20% to 30% due to stage 5/6 load shedding earlier in the cycle.
Thinking of setting the SoC threshold back to 20%.
I've saved R65,611 over the three years (about 30% of the investment).
CoJ have added a R230 fixed fee to prepaid (with larger fixed fee to come).
Also Eskom want a 43.55% increase for municipalities for 2025.
These increases seem to make it financially viable to add another 5kWh battery and 8xPV panels to go from 80% to 95% off-grid which I'm considering.

How do you conclude that it's a risk for targeted robberies?
Will someone come and steal my PV panels?
The location information is voluntary.

If thieves want to target a home, they could use:
Driving around the suburbs. Property Value information from Metro General Property Valuation Register Property24. Google Earth (Satellite) or other satellite site. Bing Street View/Google Street View
 

Thanks,
Did a Google and seems to be an issue with some SunSynk models that creates interfering harmonics on the power line.
Hopefully SunSynk can fix it for you. 😞

Would be interesting to see a spectrum analysis of the AC in and AC out.

The 8k has some fans and should be installed away from living areas - like in your garage.
The NRS certification is done independently. Sunsynk is sold in UK, EU, US, OZ and many other places that have stricter rules - under the brands Sunsynk, Deye & Sol-Ark
Most people very happy with the SunSynk/Deye inverters.
When is the high pitched sound? It it all the time or during load shedding or when charging or when PV is at maximum load is it when discharging or etc...
1.Never heard of the high pitched issue before.
2.Try Victron - they make some excellent inverters.
3.To sell, try the classified section: https://powerforum.co.za/forum/27-classifieds/

My system is registered with the City. I don't know how tedious it was because I signed a letter empowering the engineering company to act as proxy for me. Then they took care of everything, right up to arranging the visit by the City's inspection team. I figured this was worth doing because, in fact, the requirement to register has been on the books for some years, and whilst the City aren't paying a lot of attention right now, and are being lenient about retrospective registrations, this won't last and eventually they will get around to enforcement. 

Anyway, I still don't sell back. And it is a pity. I wouldn't have a large excess, but I would give it away as long as doing so was cost neutral to me. But I can only lose in Johannesburg under the City's current tariffs.

3 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

In 2023, 79.7% of my kWh came from Solar / Self generated.
20.3% comes from grid - mostly cloudy days and winter (where we use electric heaters)

Outages > 4h:

We experienced a total of 417h18m/17d9h18m in 180 incidents of outages (load shedding)
We were not impacted by outages.
The grid meter readings from the CoJ Meter and the consumption is from a Hiking DDS238-2 WiFi meter.
The decrease in self generation can be attributed to me changing the SoC threshold from 20% to 30% due to stage 5/6 load shedding earlier in the cycle.
Thinking of setting the SoC threshold back to 20%.
I've saved R65,611 over the three years (about 30% of the investment).
CoJ have added a R230 fixed fee to prepaid (with larger fixed fee to come).
Also Eskom want a 43.55% increase for municipalities for 2025.
These increases seem to make it financially viable to add another 5kWh battery and 8xPV panels to go from 80% to 95% off-grid which I'm considering.

3 year update - Solar PV & battery were installed 21 Nov 2021.

In 2023, 79.7% of my kWh came from Solar / Self generated.
20.3% comes from grid - mostly cloudy days and winter (where we use electric heaters)

Outages > 4h:

We experienced a total of 417h18m/17d9h18m in 180 incidents of outages (load shedding)
We were not impacted by outages.
The grid meter readings from the CoJ Meter and the consumption is from a Hiking DDS238-2 WiFi meter.
The decrease in self generation can be attributed to me changing the SoC threshold from 20% to 30% due to stage 5/6 load shedding earlier in the cycle.
Thinking of setting the SoC threshold back to 20%.
I've saved R65,611 over the three years (about 30% of the investment).
CoJ have added a R230 fixed fee to prepaid (with larger fixed fee to come).
Also Eskom want a 43.55% increase for municipalities for 2025.
These increases seem to make it financially viable to add another 5kWh battery and 8xPV panels to go from 80% to 95% off-grid which I'm considering.

It's very common for homes to sell excess to grid - read up on Australia and California and Europe.
Not so common in South Africa for homes to grid feed due to:
registering process is is tedious (red tape) - needs streamlining registration process is costly due to consultants - needs streamlining bi-directional meter can be expensive - need cheaper meters limited to "net-zero" - can only receive money for what you consume - allow to sell all generated PV electricity rates paid to consumers are low making cost recovery difficult - better rates (eg CT has better rates) Most of us just give up and only self-use.
This is a real pity as lots of excess home PV electricity power goes to waste.
Not sure why Metros don't encourage electricity from home users.
1kWh from the my PV system is the same as 1kWh from Eskom and mine is much cheaper.

If the grid-feed was encouraged, then new installs would be built and sized for that.
Instead they sized home PV for self consumption.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa needs to push Nersa, Eskom, Metros to fix the process for the benefit of the country.

Eskom is making the finance case to add an additional battery add 8 more panels and go from 20% grid usage to 0% grid usage.
Then I disconnect and go 100% offgrid.
Problem solved.

I had similar problem with LEOCH batteries.  Finally Averge instructed that all packs must be parallel connected with RS485 and then to my laptop with a RS485/USB adapter.
The newest version of the 48100-S battery needs a protocol change to communicate with RS485. Important: set on each pack a different identification address on the dip switches.

Eskom is making the finance case to add an additional battery add 8 more panels and go from 20% grid usage to 0% grid usage.
Then I disconnect and go 100% offgrid.
Problem solved.