https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/438132-10c-per-kwh-why-selling-extra-solar-power-to-municipalities-is-not-worth-it.html

Is this not typical of our government?  In other countries they actively encourage consumers to acquire renewable energy and subsidise installations. Do they not have the insight to realise that extra power from solar can contribute to alleviate the shortages in the country?  If there is excess power find a way to store it be it in batteries, pumped water, hydrogen.  Surely the knowhow and technology exist to anticipate extra demand due to cloudy/rainy conditions.

Firstly, this is not one decision with one set of tariffs. In many places tariffs are set by local government. COJ have made a separate but similar decision to Tshwane. More for the meter, higher buy back tariff, but I still can't see a way to make it work for me so I don't bother.  COCT have, as noted in the article, a different tariff which seems to give more to the seller, but I still wonder how much money is to be made.

Secondly, we have an extra complication in this country, and this is centralised: Load shedding.

Utilities overseas have reliability taken for granted, so the power we would use to charge batteries is also available as export. A mate of mine in Brussels has panels so that he can sell back, but no batteries because he doesn't have to anticipate load shedding and protect himself against it. In such cases it is easier for the property owner to get his system to pay for itself after a few years.

My personal view is that municipalities and Eskom don't want to buy back from domestic producers, so they make it theoretically possible but you'd have to be bonkers (or illiterate) to do it. This is because they can end up with too much power on the grid at times of day when the power is low. Sure, this is not an insoluble problem, but a solution will cost non-trivial amounts of money. 

And Eskom/national government have a problem with it because they are trying to attract independent generators to feed into the grid, and they have to leave room for them to make a profit.

The latter scenario creates some interesting possibilities, and we need to remember we are not the only country with some of the problems that we have.

Britain split their grid off from generation. Now the householder can chose to buy his electricity from a range of providers who have different tariffs, or who may offer electricity generated only from renewable sources. You can make your choice. I did some shopping around using my last address in the UK. The best deal I could get was about twice what I pay in Johannesburg (though the next day I got an email from a provider in Scotland who said they would save me another penny a year on whatever deal I currently had).

But I am rambling now. Point is this: The UK is not solar power heaven, but it is possible to have panels on your roof and sell back. But there are two laws that come into play:
1) You may only sell back to the company you buy from (assuming they do buy back, they are not obliged to)

2) In this free market scenario government does not fix the sell or the buy back tariffs, other than to stipulate that the buy back tariff must be greater than zero pence per kw/h.

10 minutes ago, Bobster said:

This is because they can end up with too much power on the grid at times of day when the power is low

I don't think there is much risk of that ever happening in SA... They should be taking everything they can get.

1. Does CoJ buy solar from domestic generation?

 

2. If so, what is required and how much do they buy back for?