Dman

@Bobster. did you ever get charged the R30,000 they quote as a fee in their comms (attached) A_guide_to_solar_instations_in_the_City_of_Johannesburg.pdf

No, my experience is that no matter what you pay, the MAX they subtract is 50% of the purchase, even if you owe back-dated amounts. If you pay more you will see they keep taking 50% of ythe purchase until the backlog of fees has been deducted

I think it is R460 you need to pay to cover the monthly fee once you add the VAT. You might not see it creep up but it's accumulating the extra R30 in vat per month in the system

Yes Bobster, it works as you are saying - there is a month-to-month carry-over and the amount will build up. I did not buy for a few months and in Jan bought R1,000 and R500 was deducted as the fee for the outstanding months. So at minimum every month we will need to buy for R480 in order that the fee for the month is paid or it will accumulate. Unfortunately I don't need the extra R240 of units per month but still need to buy these to pay the fee. They should have a way of paying JUST the monthly fee

I don't think there is a way, and I am guessing the outstanding fee does not roll-over, so if you don't pay it this month they won't charge you double the next month. If they were to acccumulate there would be issues when selling the house and the new owenr would need to take over the debt, but woiuld not know about it. I have been skipping months and they still allow recharges.

That's true. My idea is to keep paying on month late. So in August I pay R230 first, so the full fee for July is paid (if the system does this), and then top up with another R200, which will give me R85 in units, then repeat the next month. I'll test it and post the results

Thanks Bobster. Yes, that makes sense, but I rarely use anything over 30 units per month, so each year I'll have 300 units spare which I'll never use. The ideal (as I am happy-ish to pay the fixed fee) is a way I can just pay the R200 a month fee seperately. The alternative is I load R200 each month. Then they will apparently only deduct R100 for the fixed fee and give me R100 in units. This is because for small recharge amounts they only put half toward the fixed fee. May be an option?

The concern is that the R230 peronth keeps adding up if you don't pay. What if in 10 years they force us to settle this? I normally only use R100 per month, but now to pay the R230 I need to load over R500 per month for them to subtract the fee (they only take half the fee if the recharge is below this). What do I do with the unused kWh I pay for and never use? The only solution is if the outstanding fees do not roll over to the next month, but info on whether this is the case are contradictory. Does anyone know?

@BobsterAs an exercise I ran my inverter to feed back to the grid and the Itron meter read the feedback as consumtion. So they bill my prepaid for feedback. I just wanted to know what would happen and share

That discrepancy between the total usage and pre-paid balance may be due to the fact that some meters read import and export of power as consumption, and hence you are 'charged' for what you feed back. This is what I want to test on my system. I agree that it makes more sense to pay a bit towards prepaid rather than be tied to the post paid and all it's costs and issues, however I am considering registering my system as a way to feed back to the grid for free (i.e. without being credited for the power) as this would allow my system to operate much more effectively. The problem with using a power meter to balance consumption and grid is that the inverter is always reducing draw from the panels to match consumption instead of just always drawing the power available and sending that easily to the house or excess to the grid. I can only do this is I won't be charged by my meter for what I feed back. My concern is if I register ( which involves having the installation signed off) is that then I will be on the books, so to speak and if the council ever decided to tax people with solar installations I would already be on the list of solar households (you never know I have seen talk of charging solar users.....).

Hi Bobster I have the same setup - Itron prepaid City Power meter and my Victron setup has the ability to feed back. I spoke to a city power technology department today and the lady advised that there are no plans to allow feedback or payment for feedback on prepaid systems - mentioning the billing issues and the fact prepaid does not include a monthly connection fee so the city makes nothing from these customers using the grid as backup. Anyway they are busy working on the billing system to allow for the payment of power feedback tariffs on post paid accounts (I saw around R 0.50 per unit in the latest tariff sheets) so not much if you would need to pay the monthly connection fee of around R800 on a post paid account. What I found interesting is you mention that there is a problem with the display unit when you feed back power, but that your meter does not trip - does that mean that your meter is able to run backwards so your usage and production cancel each other out on a daily basis? This is something I would like to do but worried that the meter will use units regardless of whether I am consuming or producing power. I would like to feed back to make my system more efficient as it is constantly reducing and increasing output based on household load at the moment. Do you recommend I test the feeding back and check what the meter does?