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Where is grid tie legal?


Energy-Jason

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On 3/21/2017 at 8:54 AM, SilverNodashi said:

City of Cape Town also allow grid with sell back. 

Tswane allow grid with sell back deactivated

City of Johannesburg allow grid with sell back deactivated

I read yesterday that Tshwane is moving to allow grid with sell back active via their EPG program, soon.

 

-G-

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I am living in Paarl and grid tie and feedings back. As long as my rates & taxes account does not show a + at their financial year end all is good. The reason is that they are not geared for actually paying out money to ratepayers and then I will have to declare it as income and then pay tax on it


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  • 3 weeks later...

The day CoCT is ready and open to buy from home owners, I will cover our entire north facing roof with panels, and the carport and the afdak ... 

Even more so if it can add to the retirement plans. ;)

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48 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

The day CoCT is ready and open to buy from home owners,

From my understanding, they already do? Or is it about the rates?

" 196 residential customers who are able to feed into the City’s grid‚” she added.

Then again, "WHO ARE ABLE TO FEED" does not necessarily

mean buy from.......
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10 minutes ago, Riaanh said:

... does not necessarily mean buy from.......

Ditto. There is the small matter of maintaining the local grid.

So to make it viable for them they need to cover that AND pay you a Rand value per kWh. Currently I am under the belief that it means a min connection fee and no monies may exchanging hands for they must first go to court to remove Eskom restraint to be able to legally buy from other sources than Eskom.

I am holding thumbs for that court case for Koeberg is end of life and most of our power comes from up-country. 

So make a "mini" grid for Cape Town and surrounds say I.

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21 minutes ago, Riaanh said:

From my understanding, they already do? Or is it about the rates?

Legally the only entity that can buy electricity in the country is Eskom. The amount of red tape you'll have to pass to get that done will look like a Sunday School Picnic compared to the current SSEG requirements.

Since they cannot buy from you, the only thing they can do is rebate you against your existing bill. So that is what they do.

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29 minutes ago, Riaanh said:

And I assume the ratio not 1:1 ?

Oh of course not!

Basically, you pay roughly a R400 connection fee. This isn't exactly "money down the well" as your <600kwh rate does come down. Instead of paying R1.76 per kwh, you pay only R1.10 (I think these are last year's rates). So when you hit 600kwh, you paid R400 + R660 == roughly what you would have paid for 600 units at the old price.

So basically they encourage you to buy at least 600kwh from them. At R1.10 it blows any battery storage completely out of the water.

For anything you feed back they rebate you 57 cents.

Edit: >=600kwh cost remains the same at around R2.13/kwh. That is the same for all tariffs except Lifeline. For lifeline, when you go over 350kwh, your rate jumps by 250%. I think.

 

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On 3/27/2017 at 9:57 AM, SilverNodashi said:

Ekurhuleni also allow grid-tie, after completing their paper work but don't offer buy-back. yet, at least.

Hi SilverNodashi,

Are you sure? I querried in Benoni and they told me export to grid is illegal

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I have attached 2 excerpts from latest City Power tariff booklet showing some info regarding grid feedback. It seems that they will allow subject to certain requirements of which this is my interpretation (but I am lazy and prone to error so read the documents for yourself!);

  • Must be registered install with all usual requirements (which I believe are Nersa requirements so should be similar anywhere),
  • Must be signed off by engineer (also Nersa apparently),
  • Must be a net consumer - you will receive credit not cash,
  • Must be Time Of Use customer - (minimum monthly cost R442.14 + vat = R504.04)
    • Service Fee (all) - R112.02
    • 60A 1ph capacity charge - R330.12
    • 80A 1ph capacity charge - R362.86
    • 60A 3Ph capacity charge - R411.09
    • 80A 3ph capacity charge - R452.03
  • Summer Rates
    • Peak - R1.3117
    • Standard - R1.0376
    • Off Peak - R0.8723
  • Winter Rates
    • Peak - R3.0177
    • Standard - R1.2362
    • Off Peak - R0.8723
  • Feedback rate (domestic)
    • R0.4279 (same as what Eskom charges City Power)

So you must pay a monthly fee of R500 and EXPENSIVE consumption unless you are able to arrange Net zero consumption (so feed back at least 3 times what you consume and much more in winter). Bear in mind that if you are pure grid-tie with no battery backup then your peak morning and evening consumption will be hellish expensive.

I think I am happy to stay without grid-tie using solar during the day (my wife and I both have offices at home so daytime consumption higher than average), and then use Prepaid at night after 20% DOD changeover to grid (battery charging solar only).

  • Prepaid Service fee - R0
  • 0-500kWh - R1.1357
  • 501-1000kWh - R1.2903
  • 2001-3000kWh - R1.3854
  • >3000kwh - R1.6961

If I can limit usage to 500kWh I will almost match the monthly connection fees - plus;

  • much cheaper equipment required,
  • no council loops to jump through,
  • no engineers to please,
  • no-one telling me that I cant add panels without reapplying,
  • and a nice battery bank to carry me through the very regular power failures in our area.

...anyone notice that City Power misspelled [Tarrif > Tariff] in the booklet

 

City Power Booklet_Tariff_2016-2017_Embedded Generation.pdf

City Power Booklet_Tariff_2016-2017_TOU.pdf

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44 minutes ago, pilotfish said:

... much cheaper equipment required,

On equipment, I am not so sure about that. If you feed back you just need the grid tie inverter and a couple of panels. 

Grid tie makes a lot more sense and quicker ROI.

Recently I was told that if I spend an additional R5.5k on the SMA install, I can stay on my old meter and on the exact same rates, feeding nothing back, as per CoCT requirements.

The trick comes in to use the power in the day for 1500w is the smallest SMA you can get, and we don't use 1500w continuously. So it is a wee bit of a waste for me.

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3 hours ago, virge said:

Hi SilverNodashi,

Are you sure? I querried in Benoni and they told me export to grid is illegal

Ask them for the "APPLICATION FOR CONNECTION OF EMBEDDED GENERATION" documentation. Though I got if from Brakpan municipality, who said it has to go back to the Boksburg municipality where their head office is. So perhaps the guys at Benoni doesn't know about it yet. 

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I'm no clairvoyant, but I believe that from NERSA side this is comming. To the best of my knowledge this is on the table with them, yet there are numerous challenges etc. BUT, once they approve SSEG, and couple a rate to that, all Munics will have to abide. At the moment their biggest stumbling block is the State/Para-Statal opposition.

One can only hope.....

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