7 minutes ago, LumexClipsal said:

Thankfully not ALL of Cape Town is on COCT. Blows my mind I'm saying this and feels like I should be kicking myself in my own butt but I'm glad to be in a suburb supplied by Eskom and not COCT. COCT seems pretty draconian with their aerial surveillances apparently. 

Agreed, all the talk from the COCT about making solar a good option gets cancelled out by some of the stupid rules they have setup, and of course the crazy fees they impose.
I am glad too to be on eskom supply in Parklands

It seems to me not to dissimilar to the refund that was allowed on solar geysers some time ago. Except that then the refund could be granted at install time, and so the quickest way to handle it was to let the installer do everything and pass the refund on to you. It was easy enough to check what the refund should be, so there was little chance of a not-so-ethical installer skimming a bit off the top. (Hmmmm... actually there was, if they misdeclared the price on the invoice).

I think there will be some effect, though maybe not as much as government is hoping. What will happen is that load on the grid will be reduced. What isn't going to so easily happen is that the purchasers will start selling back - because they still have to deal with local authorities and pay for a bidirectional meter. 
 

A lot of the discussion here touches on the big problem with all this encouraging homes and businesses to reduce their consumption from the grid: This directly reduces Eskom's income.

We need to stop comparing things to what happens overseas because
1) Overseas the energy provider(s) is usually not in dire financial straits and trying to deal with massive corruption and sabotage
2) Overseas they don't have loadshedding
3) their energy is more expensive. 
4) They have time-of-day tariffs which allow home owners to be creative with when they sell back and when they consume (EG in most EU countries and in the UK, you leave your dishwasher on a timer and run it in the wee hours)
5) They have floating energy prices

I get annoyed with know-it-all columnists in papers saying "well they did this in Luxembourg..." whilst they ignore the significant differences between here and whatever other place they're comparing us to.

11 minutes ago, rob1 said:

Then why limit it to future purchases only...

Because we don't change tax laws retrospectively. A government that will allow you a break on something you did two years ago will just as easily tax you on something you did two years when it wasn't taxable. 

I am way more interested in reverse feed - net zero grid usage. Anyone have (a new) thread or link to any of that? (CoJ).

Cheers, 

@JamesF.  You can forget about net-zero grid usage when government or even the municipality is involved.  Institutions will legislate and send you all sorts of levy charges.  It's not gona be worth your while.  The world over, the small people need to shun fake governments, puppets on WEF strings, and cut as many links as possible with BIG-everything.

In a small, well run community, net-zero would be possible.  You could, for instance, formalize an agreement with a neighbour that, for various reasons, does not want a solar system.  You provide a bi-directional meter that both parties can monitor.  During LS you agree to supply your neighbour with some power.  In return, you use your neighbours Eskom supply to top-up your power in bad-weather conditions.  The meter monitors the energy flow and you agree on some form of out-of-balance consumption payment, ideally outside the formal money system. 

With more complex/expensive inverter tech, one can install a system to optimize own-power generation WITH the neighbour's load.

Cutting your strings with Eskom/municipality power might be risky if your agreement is with one single neighbour.  He might move, die, get into a disagreement with you, etc.  If a bunch of solar users and a bunch of only-grid users come together, you cover your base.

Depending how isolated or not you stay, this might not be an option for you.  However, modern living has trended for smaller and smaller units.  Often, in these Bang-Jan-Gated-Communities you are so close, you can literally wish your neighbour happy birthday through your bedroom window.  LOL.

3 or 4 neighbours that don't have solar could even network.  Have an agreement that during LS, ONE neighbour runs a decent sized generator, sharing the power.  Next day, the next neighbour feeds the system from his generator.  You cut out noise and optimise consumption.  You increase the life-expectancy of your own generator.  You have system redundancy and a failure of your own generator is then not a train smash.  There are many ways to skin a cat.

We don't talk to our neighbours anymore.  We need to re-learn ways of living of the past.  Self reliance with support of your local community.  This should be done for EVERYTHING.  Food, services, medical help, etc.  The days of relying on BIG-everything is over.  I cannot wait to see the collapse of big Pharma, the Googles, Facebooks, Apples, Amazons, Microsofts, etc. of this world.  What has happened the last 3 years is beyond words.  Too many sheeple.  This world will split.  Guaranteed.

On 2023/02/27 at 2:41 PM, Bobster. said:

A lot of the discussion here touches on the big problem with all this encouraging homes and businesses to reduce their consumption from the grid: This directly reduces Eskom's income.

We need to stop comparing things to what happens overseas because
1) Overseas the energy provider(s) is usually not in dire financial straits and trying to deal with massive corruption and sabotage
2) Overseas they don't have loadshedding
3) their energy is more expensive. 
4) They have time-of-day tariffs which allow home owners to be creative with when they sell back and when they consume (EG in most EU countries and in the UK, you leave your dishwasher on a timer and run it in the wee hours)
5) They have floating energy prices

I get annoyed with know-it-all columnists in papers saying "well they did this in Luxembourg..." whilst they ignore the significant differences between here and whatever other place they're comparing us to.

I have an issue with (3) their energy is more expensive.

Yes it's more expensive if you do a straight Rand/Dollar conversion.
You conveniently forgot to factor in local purchasing power and access to natural resources (coal, wind, solar).
People earning € or US$ have a much higher purchasing power that ZA locals.
ZA has access to local cheap coal and high quality solar and wind resources.

IMHO, I think SARS/Government R15,000 for solar panels is narrow minded and does not address the load shedding issue aggressively enough.

1) Does not look at at the system as a whole, the R15,000 only applies to the panels - no mounting system. no cables, no fuses, no installation, no inverter, no battery.
Sure people are going to claim for the panels and make it more affordable, but it's not enough of an incentive.
2) The R15,000/R60,000 limit is high for panels only.
Most home installations don't install R60,000 of panels.
Most people are not going to realise the R15,000 saving.

The incentive should:
1) Be on the whole system
2) Be for grid feeding systems only
3) Require batteries to deal with peak
4) Be higher +50% of total system cost

You may think 50% is a excessive - it's actually low.
50% is the cheapest electricity that SARS/Government can fund.
SARS/Government is getting a 50% discount on every kWh added to the grid - much cheaper than any other hardware or kWh.
With battery, you address the intermittency of solar.

50% incentive will directly reduces Eskom's income (and coal industry revenue) but having no load shedding is 1000% better for the country than worrying about Eskom revenue.
Load shedding has cost the country trillions of rands over the last 15 years - Eskom had it's many chances and have failed to live up to their mandate.

Just now, system32 said:

I have an issue with (3) their energy is more expensive.

Yes it's more expensive if you do a straight Rand/Dollar conversion.
You conveniently forgot to factor in local purchasing power and access to natural resources (coal, wind, solar).
People earning € or US$ have a much higher purchasing power that ZA locals.
ZA has access to local cheap coal and high quality solar and wind resources.

Maybe I watch too much TV news. But since I have been doing that, I notice that a lot of folks in the UK are having trouble keeping their homes warm this winter, and the government is having to subsidise everybody's energy bills, but that subsidy is not promised forever. As it is, there's a lot of people playing the old trick of getting on a bus to there and back just to keep warm. 

The real problem here is that energy supply is privatised and thus the invisible hand of the market moves prices. I have family in Spain. A couple of months back their energy bill doubled in the space of the month, without them having notably increased their consumption. 

Sometimes I want to kiss NERSA on those lovely chubby cheeks of theirs.
 

A privatised energy generation market is going to be whole different kettle of fish for us locally. When shareholder returns are more important than customers, well, you just need to look at what happened with California in the early 2000s and Texas with their recent winter freezes

On 2023/03/06 at 1:07 PM, Bobster. said:

Maybe I watch too much TV news. But since I have been doing that, I notice that a lot of folks in the UK are having trouble keeping their homes warm this winter, and the government is having to subsidise everybody's energy bills, but that subsidy is not promised forever. As it is, there's a lot of people playing the old trick of getting on a bus to there and back just to keep warm. 

The real problem here is that energy supply is privatised and thus the invisible hand of the market moves prices. I have family in Spain. A couple of months back their energy bill doubled in the space of the month, without them having notably increased their consumption. 

Sometimes I want to kiss NERSA on those lovely chubby cheeks of theirs.

The price of gas and and price of oil in Europe has everything do do with the Russia/Ukraine war and sanctions and very little to do with privatisation.

The answer to high gas & oil prices is to not rely on gas & oil and to self generate electricity from other resources like solar and wind.

My home of 5 has not had load shedding since Nov 2021 when I installed my system.
My home of 5 has reduced Eskom bill by ~85% (pay Eskom 15% and 85% comes from Sun).
Fortunately in ZA we blessed with excellent Solar and Wind, just need to make use of it.

Back to the topic, PV incentives are a token.
Many of my neighbors are installing Solar+Lithium Battery.
Many businesses are installing Solar.
Eskom will be left with the non-payers (Yes, I'm looking at you Soweto).
 

 

Edited March 18, 20233 yr by system32

11 minutes ago, system32 said:

The incentive should:
1) Be on the whole system
2) Be for grid feeding systems only
3) Require batteries to deal with peak
4) Be higher +50% of total system cost

I want to agree with you. But the problem we run into with this is inspection and certification. In fact with preapproval. So after they have told Bobster that his choice of inverter is on the list, they have to go and inspect and see that everything is as specced and connected properly and configured the way they like it. Then they have to hope that that sneaky old Bobster doesn't change the settings the moment they're out the door.

Loadshedding is the big complicator here. It changes everything.

I have a friend in Brussels. The City put panels on his roof and an inverter inside his house. Simple grid tied system. Credits at a good rate, no export limit.

That could all be done here and relatively easily, BUT we have to have batteries and we want to keep charging them. And I don't know about anybody else, but if Eskom or City Power or Government think that I'm going to get my batteries nicely charged up, only to empty them into the grid around 5pm when there's load shedding due at 8pm, they can think again. 

This is the stumbling block. All these schemes that they have overseas are very nice and very practical, as long as you have a high degree of confidence that you'll have a grid all day.
 

3 minutes ago, madness_za said:

A privatised energy generation market is going to be whole different kettle of fish for us locally. When shareholder returns are more important than customers, well, you just need to look at what happened with California in the early 2000s and Texas with their recent winter freezes

Competition and regulation do help to ensure that customers are protected.
We need to learn from mistakes in California and Texas with privatised energy generation.

Eskom is not a private entity, it is a non-profit SOE designed to minimise electricty costs - well how's that going?

California with Enron Scam and Texas with Regulator not mandating weather proofing of gas supplies pales in comparison to the utter destruction that Eskom load shedding has wrecked over the past 15 years.

18 minutes ago, system32 said:

Back to the topic, PV incentives are a token.
Many of my neighbors are installing Solar+Lithium Battery.
Many businesses are installing Solar.
Eskom will be left with the non-payers (Yes, I'm looking at you Soweto).

Erm, nope... You don't seriously expect Soweto to pay for power? Eskom will just have another debt pile to transfer to taxpayers. Like they just did in the 2023 budget.

Here's looking at you, Jo'burg suburbs.

28 minutes ago, system32 said:

The answer to high gas & oil prices is not rely on gas & oil and to self generate electricity from other resources like solar and wind.

Well you need a mix, or a huge over supply. Because some days you won't get enough wind and not enough sun. Much was made a few years back that the UK managed to run 24 hours with no coal being burned (OK... they were sill burning Gas, but "coal" is the cuss word). But that was either serendipitous or very carefully picked as it happened. It was not announced in advance because what if they DID announce in advance and it was a windless, miserable day. 

So really you need lots of geothermal or hyrdo, or you need (another cuss word, but we have to get used to it) a fair amount of nuclear.

Most important thing you need (and it's too late now, you needed it years ago) is planning. UK's best locations for wind are up north, but for historic reasons their grid has limited ability to move all that power to the south and the midlands where most of the consumption happens (caveat: this is what Sky have been reporting).

In SA we should be able to generate and store a lot of solar energy most days. How likely is it that the sun ain't going to shine anywhere? BUT the time for that was 10 years ago. Some scribes (expertise unknonw) are reporting that theoretically SA has more than enough renewable to halt load shedding, but there aren't access points to the grid so that the owners of these facilities can start wheeling.

Of course there are locations where there are grid access points. These are called old Eskom stations. There was one that was repurposed as a proof of concept. They had the land, they had the access roads, they had connections to the grid. So they erected a whole lot of solar, retrained their local staff, and that one site is feeding into the grid. This is very annoying because it shows that Eksom can and have done this, but they did the one site and then stopped and waited for funding or something.

Edited March 6, 20233 yr by Bobster.

11 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

I want to agree with you. But the problem we run into with this is inspection and certification. In fact with preapproval. So after they have told Bobster that his choice of inverter is on the list, they have to go and inspect and see that everything is as specced and connected properly and configured the way they like it. Then they have to hope that that sneaky old Bobster doesn't change the settings the moment they're out the door.

Loadshedding is the big complicator here. It changes everything.

I have a friend in Brussels. The City put panels on his roof and an inverter inside his house. Simple grid tied system. Credits at a good rate, no export limit.

That could all be done here and relatively easily, BUT we have to have batteries and we want to keep charging them. And I don't know about anybody else, but if Eskom or City Power or Government think that I'm going to get my batteries nicely charged up, only to empty them into the grid around 5pm when there's load shedding due at 8pm, they can think again. 

This is the stumbling block. All these schemes that they have overseas are very nice and very practical, as long as you have a high degree of confidence that you'll have a grid all day.

+1, I agree with your points.

In most places, PV+Battery is to self consume what your panels generate.
Lots of homes in sunny places like California and Australia are retrofitting batteries to panel only system to change from grid-tie to self-consumption.
The feed in rates for electricity has dropped to near zero during midday in these places.

It's cheaper to self-consume than round-tripping the grid and buying back at peak.
In ZA, batteries are required to deal with load shedding with the added benefit of self consume.

In ZA if you have PV+battery I would expect that in the event of load shedding you would self consume first.
If you have excess, then by all means sell to the grid, be it at midday or 5pm peak.

6 minutes ago, GreenFields said:

Erm, nope... You don't seriously expect Soweto to pay for power? Eskom will just have another debt pile to transfer to taxpayers. Like they just did in the 2023 budget.

One note of caution about this. There have been screen dumps circulated on social media that seem to show "Soweto" not being shed at all whilst the rest of us struggle.

The Soweto in question is a suburb in Durban North, part of eThekwini municipality, and eThekwini is spared 4 stages of loadshedding whilst they recover from the disasters visited upon them.
 

3 hours ago, Bobster. said:

Well you need a mix, or a huge over supply. Because some days you won't get enough wind and not enough sun. Much was made a few years back that the UK managed to run 24 hours with no coal being burned (OK... they were sill burning Gas, but "coal" is the cuss word). But that was either serendipitous or very carefully picked as it happened. It was not announced in advance because what if they DID announce in advance and it was a windless, miserable day. 

So really you need lots of geothermal or hyrdo, or you need (another cuss word, but we have to get used to it) a fair amount of nuclear.

Most important thing you need (and it's too late now, you needed it years ago) is planning. UK's best locations for wind are up north, but for historic reasons their grid has limited ability to move all that power to the south and the midlands where most of the consumption happens (caveat: this is what Sky have been reporting).

In SA we should be able to generate and store a lot of solar energy most days. How likely is it that the sun ain't going to shine anywhere. BUT the time for that was 10 years ago. Some scribes (expertise unknonw) are reporting that theoretically SA has more than enough renewable to halt load shedding, but there aren't access points to the grid so that the owners of these facilities can start wheeling.

Of course there are locations where there are grid access points. These are called old Eskom stations. There was one that was repurposed as a proof of concept. They had the land, they had the access roads, they had connections to the grid. So they erected a whole lot of solar, retrained their local staff, and that one site is feeding into the grid. This is very annoying because it shows that Eksom can and have done this, but they did the one site and then stopped and waited for funding or something.

In a renewable economy, we going to have to over provision and distribute to deal with weather issues - sun don't shine, wind don't blow, etc.
The end result will be plenty of periods with the marginal cost of energy being zero with plenty of excess when the wind blows and sun shines.
Remember that the cost of solar and wind fuel is zero.

Tony Seba - world famous futurist with excellent track record has a talk on "Super Power/Super Abundant" energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsnkPLkf1ao
The Tony Seba talk is a prediction of what will start happening in places like Australia, US, China, Spain that are aggressively adopting Solar & Wind in 10-20 years.

Chamath Palihapitiya - well respected venture capitalist talks about "zero marginal cost of energy" in the All-In-Podcast at 1:32:48.
https://youtu.be/FOuks3BM55o?t=5537
The discussion is in relation to on-shoring in US, where electricity is more expensive that China and that Solar & Wind will over supply will result in zero marginal cost of energy.

ZA needs to plan accordingly as electricity is a major cost in a manufacturing economy.

https://twitter.com/nickhedley/status/1632664003406077952

Edited March 6, 20233 yr by system32

I for one am not going to try for the rebate as someone mentioned it will put us on their radar and the hassle for that amount of money isnt worth it.

I would like to hear from others who live in Durban (I am in Hillcrest which is close to DBN) about their dealings ,if any with Ethekweni re solar registrations etc.

I went into our local Ethekweni office the other day to sort out something else and asked who i could talk to about solar system registrations.I got a total blank look and nobody knew what I was talking about so I left it.Nobody here bothers to register their systems.

Edited April 7, 20233 yr by Nicholas Strachan

3 hours ago, Nicholas Strachan said:

I for one am not going to try for the rebate as someone mentioned it will put us on their radar and the hassle for that amount of money isnt worth it.

I would like to hear from others who live in Durban (I am in Hillcrest which is close to DBN) about their dealings ,if any with Ethekweni re solar registrations etc.

I went into our local Ethekweni office the other day to sort out something else and asked who i could talk to about solar system registrations.I got a total blank look and nobody knew what I was talking about so I left it.Nobody here bothers to register their systems.

I suspect we end up on the radar anyway. COJ is hardly the best run municipality on the planet, but they monitor billing or prepaid purchases against each meter, and if consumption drops significantly, they investigate. 

I've several times had them around. It's never unpleasant. They are polite & cheerful. I understand they're just doing their job. But by now the City must know I've gone solar. 

3 hours ago, Nicholas Strachan said:

I for one am not going to try for the rebate as someone mentioned it will put us on their radar and the hassle for that amount of money isnt worth it.

There are two radars. SARS and City. To claim the rebate, which is from SARS, you need a COC and VAT invoice. There is no requirement that you register with the city. SARS stay out of that because requirements vary across municipalities. 

SARS generally treat your tax return with a great degree of confidentiality, so I don't see them dobbing you in to Eskom or the Municipality. 

So I think there is no downside to that rebate for the homeowner. 

Edited April 7, 20233 yr by Bobster.
Sppeling

14 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

There are two radars. SARS and City. To claim the rebate, which is from SARS, you need a COC and VAT invoice. There is no requirement that you register with the city. SARS stay out of that because requirements vary across municipalities. 

SARS generally treat your tax return with a great degree of confidentiality, so I don't see them dobbing you in to Eskom or the Municipality. 

So I think there is no downside to that rebate for the homeowner. 

Ah ok cool,manythanks for your input.Quite honestly i am not going to bother with the rebate.I have 6kw of panels, 3 x Hubble am2 (total 16.5kw) and an 8kw Sunsynk plus a geyserwise system and am a household of 1 so my electricity usage over the last 6 months has dropped dramatically and they havent said anything. Ethekweni is not a well run municipality at all.

So out of curiosity I went and looked the Ekurhuleni's policy with feeding in .

2022/2023 you got a rate of 88c/kwh . WHich I am not going to comment on wrt to fairness etc.

2023/2024 draft budget is only 77c/kwh. On top of that you need to buy a special meter, be on the fixed rate as well as getting signoff of your installation from a pr registered engineer.

TBH I see absolutely no incentive to feed in as I dont see how the small home owner would even generate enough to cover costs, never mind actually make a profit for it to be worthwhile. Oh and you have to be a net 0 at the end of the month.

Just the difference on buying on IBT rate vs fixed rate is a R200 to R300 saving. ie  428kh of feedin/month or 14.2kwh/day   ................

Financially makes no sense in trying to feedin at all in Ekurhuleni

Edited April 8, 20233 yr by Gary Waterworth

1 hour ago, Gary Waterworth said:

So out of curiosity I went and looked the Ekurhuleni's policy with feeding in .

2022/2023 you got a rate of 88c/kwh . WHich I am not going to comment on wrt to fairness etc.

NERSA cap the resell tariff. COCT got around this by offering a 25c per kWh incentive over and above the permitted rate. That comes from the City itself. Clearly they can afford it.

1 hour ago, Gary Waterworth said:

2023/2024 draft budget is only 77c/kwh. On top of that you need to buy a special meter, be on the fixed rate as well as getting signoff of your installation from a pr registered engineer.

I don't have a problem with that last requirement. I think the City/Eskom have a legitimate interest in what is connected to their grid. I know guys who have done their own, and they are not electricians nor have they got even an updated COC. This is not good.

The meter is a killer. COCT are testing different brands of meter in an effort to bring the cost down, but there will still be a cost. And with the low resell rate and the net purchaser requirement, it's hard to see how folks can make this worth their while.

1 hour ago, Gary Waterworth said:

TBH I see absolutely no incentive to feed in as I dont see how the small home owner would even generate enough to cover costs, never mind actually make a profit for it to be worthwhile. Oh and you have to be a net 0 at the end of the month.

Another NERSA requirement. But Cities can do something about this. COCT applied for and got a temporary reprieve. I believe for 2 years.

1 hour ago, Gary Waterworth said:

Just the difference on buying on IBT rate vs fixed rate is a R200 to R300 saving. ie  428kh of feedin/month or 14.2kwh/day   ................

Financially makes no sense in trying to feedin at all in Ekurhuleni

If it were just a matter of feeding your surplus back into the grid and getting the credit, it would be worth something (not a great thing, but something) and I think there would be greater uptake. But as it is I question if it's worth it anywhere. Even in COCT where they are making such a hooha about it.

I am record as saying, and I mean this, that I would give my excess away for free as long as it doesn't cost me anything, and as long as there is no quota that I have to meet each month IE they get what I get, for free, when I've got it.

COJ are busy with a meter upgrade program (one reason being that they have too many types of meter in the field). Maybe that will bring down the cost of giving away my surplus.

Of course there's an extra twist in SA, where we have a bunch of so-called experts telling us about what happens in the EU. We have load shedding to deal with. Every single day. So we have to charge batteries. That reduces the surplus that we have to export (but so does that net zero requirement), and I'm certainly not going to dump anything from my battery into the grid once the sun has gone down. That's for keeping my lights on.

So all things considered, I agree with you. It's just not worth it to resell. As it is, I am saving an average of 86% on my bill (3 year average including overcast days with low PV), so my saving is great already and maybe that and always having power are sufficient rewards.

Edited April 8, 20233 yr by Bobster.

11 hours ago, Bobster. said:

I don't have a problem with that last requirement. I think the City/Eskom have a legitimate interest in what is connected to their grid. I know guys who have done their own, and they are not electricians nor have they got even an updated COC. This is not good.

 

Just need to clarify this ..

When I say the signoff is by a person, it is not your average Installation/Master electrician who generates the COC , which I agree has to be provided.

It is someone who has teh full diploma/univ degree and is accredited with their national body. I cant remember the exact name.

Just getting that signoff is going to cost a few R1000

 

36 minutes ago, Gary Waterworth said:

Just need to clarify this ..

When I say the signoff is by a person, it is not your average Installation/Master electrician who generates the COC , which I agree has to be provided.

It is someone who has teh full diploma/univ degree and is accredited with their national body. I cant remember the exact name.

Just getting that signoff is going to cost a few R1000

 

 

"The South African PV GreenCard is a safety certification, a quality assurance standard, and training programme for solar PV installers. Quality and safety are assured via the specialized education and training provided to solar PV installers prior to them being certified and registered on the PV GreenCard database. This certification means that these installers are proficient and compliant with all of the relevant national and municipal electrical regulations.

On completion of an installation, a certified PV GreenCard installer will issue the client with both a digital and physical document that details all of the specifications of the solar PV system as well as a checklist that all of the required installation steps have been completed to the required standard. This document can in turn be used as proof of compliance for insurance, finance, and regulatory purposes".