OK... I am now posting most but not all of the documentation. Not included here are the COC and the letter appointing a proxy to negotiate on my behalf. The COC is required, you don't have to have a proxy. I have removed all names - property owner, installer, proxy, and the Pr Eng who signed off - branding, telephone numbers, meter numbers, account numbers, registration numbers.

Note that they will want details of the installer. They will also want a compliance certificate for the inverter and... well you'll see.

Here are the application form and the compliance certificate
 

GW_ES (14A)_Certificate NRS097-2-1.pdf

APPLICATION FOR INVERTER BASED GRID TIED PHOTOVOLTAIC INSTALLATION FORM redacted (3).pdf

Edited February 3, 20242 yr by Bobster.

Now the line drawing (required) of the installation, a document describing how the system is to be operated in the long run, and the commissioning report (which has to be signed by a Pr Eng).

So quite a bit of paperwork.


 

PHOTOVOLTAIC INSTALLATION COMMISSIONING REPORT FORM redacted.pdf OPERATION PHILOSOPHY AND MAINTENANCE PROCEDURE FOR HYBRID SOLAR SYSTEM.pdf SLD redacted.pdf

And now I wait for the City to test and sign off.

On 2024/02/03 at 9:07 AM, Bobster. said:

And now I wait for the City to test and sign off.

No I don't.

Now there is no stock of the safety labels. So no arrangements have been made with the City because as things stand, without those labels, I cannot satisfy the requirements.

I wait for stock of labels. 

Edited February 7, 20242 yr by Bobster.
Formatting

OK. So now, according to the boffins, my system is 100% compliant and they are going to put some pressure on City Power. The last piece fell into place with the application of some labels, like this one affixed to the cover over the meter and the municipal breaker. 

Others were placed on the main DB (Warning! This equipment is supplied by more than one source.), below the main breaker on the DB (Point of utility connection) and on the AC DB for the inverter under the change over switch (Point of Generator Connection). 

Now we wait for City Power to test. Apparently this includes earthing, checking for anti-islanding, and timing how long the inverter takes to reconnect on restoration of grid supply (this should not be instantaneous). 

And the date with destiny has been set. Wednesday 6th March.

OK… so the City Power engineers were just here (in a hybrid vehicle).

They require a representative from the installer to be present at inspection time. The engineer who did all the work until now may be present, but doesn’t have to be

As far as I could see and ask whilst they were busy, they checked

1. That the inverter is as described on the documentation the engineer submitted. This includes the serial number. They had already checked that the inverter (as described) was on the approved list
2. That all the necessary safety labels were in place. On the outside box that houses the main breaker, on the main DB, on any sub DBs for the PV system. I chatted to them about this. They said that there have been cases of City Power electricians thinking the house was dead because they had thrown the main breaker outside on the street, then getting a surprise. So the labels alert any electrician to the presence of a second power source.
3. They had the installer rep demonstrate that the inverter is connected as described in the line drawing. He didn’t have to open up the whole thing and take them up into the roof, he did have to answer any questions they asked him: “Please show us [whatever]”
4. They checked the functioning of a three way breaker that was installed so that the house can be suppplied by the PV system, by the grid, or get no supply at all.
5. They measured the time taken to reconnect after grid power returns. They are looking for 60 seconds or greater.

They will now take the test results back to their office. They don’t liaise with me or with the installer, they deal with the engineer. They said that they were happy with what they had seen but pointed out to me that the actual certificate was not yet issued, and the system is not deemed registered until the certificate is issued.

They also told me I shouldn’t change anything because any certificate that will be issued will be for the system as tested.

Whilst we were waiting for the installer to arrive, I asked the City's engineer about the stories going around about arbitrary disconnections. He said this is not City Power policy. He said that the most common means of finding out about a PV system is that the meter is misbehaving (according to the householder) or that they go out to check why your meter readings have dropped off. They may advise you on the process to register your system, to get your installer to check the installation, or they may suggest that you switch to the reseller's tariff, but there should be no disconnections just for having PV.

Edited March 6, 20242 yr by Bobster.
He/they

Thanks for your comprehensive feedback!👍

Thanks @Bobster. for documenting your CiJ SSEG registration journey.

Feeding the grid needs to be Win-Win for customers and CoJ.

Many of us want to help the grid with out excess electricity, but are put off by the lack of knowledge, costs and process.

Hopefully we all learn lessons (including CityPower) and CityPower gets ready for the thousands of customers who follow your journey.

Ideally, every new system will be grid feeding at time of installation in order to improve ROI, help the grid and reduce SSEG registration difficulties.
 

Edited March 6, 20242 yr by system32

41 minutes ago, system32 said:

Thanks @Bobster. for documenting your CiJ SSEG registration journey.

Feeding the grid needs to be Win-Win for customers and CoJ.

Many of us want to help the grid with out excess electricity, but are put off by the lack of knowledge, costs and process.

Hopefully we all learn lessons (including CityPower) and CityPower gets ready for the thousands of customers who follow your journey.

Ideally, every new system will be grid feeding at time of installation in order to improve ROI, help the grid and reduce SSEG registration difficulties.
 

There's so many rules! It's worse than rugby.

So far it's all been technical and safety. There's been no discussion about tariffs, and under the current tariff structures as published, in Johannesburg I have no interest in selling back because it will cost me money.

I hope they can come up with a set of tariffs that will change my mind.

Qualifier: If the new meters that they are installing can cope with two way transmission and so don't have to be replaced at the householder's expense, and if one is on the post-paid tariff at time of install, then there may be a small win to be had. 

6 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

There's been no discussion about tariffs, and under the current tariff structures as published, in Johannesburg I have no interest in selling back because it will cost me money.

I hope they can come up with a set of tariffs that will change my mind.

This a million times.

In Cape Town, it looks like feed-in gets credited to the entire monthly municipal bill (so deducted from property rates as well? The article states "The accumulated amount will be deducted from party’s monthly municipal account").

This would make it far more compelling for us here in JHB. Until then there's no incentive for most people here to bother - which is a shame, because the creaky old grid could do with some extra feed-in.

On a sunny day in JHB I now have over 25 spare units per day (!) to feedback to the grid - but it's unfortunately going to end up costing me significant money to do so - so it simply goes to waste.

 

10 minutes ago, JayMardern said:

This a million times.

In Cape Town, it looks like feed-in gets credited to the entire monthly municipal bill (so deducted from property rates as well? The article states "The accumulated amount will be deducted from party’s monthly municipal account").

This would make it far more compelling for us here in JHB. Until then there's no incentive for most people here to bother - which is a shame, because the creaky old grid could do with some extra feed-in.

I don't see that it makes a difference. No matter what heading the credit is under, the total of my bill is reduced. 

What COCT are doing is making a lot of noise about how fantastic it can be. So they're advertising that you can sell back and save some money. And they have a more attractive tariff than COJ do. So they are getting uptake. 

Whilst some googling I have done shows that COJ have had their regulations and a registration process in place for at least five years, they have not made a song and dance about it, so nobody thinks about selling back and so nobody does. Well not nobody, but not a lot of folks. And they also need to work on their offerings. Last time I looked at their tariffs it was going to cost me about ten grand for a new meter, and about a grand a month in admin fees to get maybe twenty bucks credit per month. So no thanks.

COJ trapped themselves years ago. Their per unit cost is lower than a lot of other municipalities, but they compensate for that with high admin fees. Probably a good idea at the time (at least 20 years ago), but now a problem for them because they have to impose those same admin fees on the reseller's tariff, and that now becomes a discouragement. Unless you're still on the post-paid tariff in which case the admin fees are the same and you can make some money back each month - but there's still the meter and the cost of that.

I hope to have these conversations in the next while. I was actually hoping to have them today, but the guys from the City had to get going to do another inspection.

10 minutes ago, JayMardern said:

On a sunny day in JHB I now have over 25 spare units per day (!) to feedback to the grid - but it's unfortunately going to end up costing me significant money to do so - so it simply goes to waste.

 

 

Edited March 6, 20242 yr by Bobster.

5 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

I don't see that it makes a difference. No matter what heading the credit is under, the total of my bill is reduced.

 

It would make a difference here I believe:

  

On 2024/01/23 at 3:53 PM, Bobster. said:

This is one of the killers when it comes to reselling - that you must be a net consumer of electricity. Over 4.5 years now, including spells of bad weather, I am averaging about 2.4 kWh per day from the grid. Call it 72 a month. So I can get paid for 71 a month. It's not worth my while to work my system harder for the R40 odd credit. 

 

If the deduction were a simple line-item credit against the full rates/taxes bill, then you could potentially stay on prepaid (with its low service fees), be a net producer, and still get the deduction as a credit against the rates/taxes regardless of the electrical portion. It would essentially remove the cap imposed by not consuming much electricity?

5 hours ago, JayMardern said:

5 hours ago, Bobster. said:

I don't see that it makes a difference. No matter what heading the credit is under, the total of my bill is reduced.

 

It would make a difference here I believe:

City Power customers get a unified bill for rates, electricity, water, sewage & pikitup. The way I see it, R100 back under any heading is R100 off the total. 

For private homes anyway. 

Or am I missing something? 

5 hours ago, JayMardern said:

If the deduction were a simple line-item credit against the full rates/taxes bill, then you could potentially stay on prepaid (with its low service fees), be a net producer, and still get the deduction as a credit against the rates/taxes regardless of the electrical portion. It would essentially remove the cap imposed by not consuming much electricity?

AIUI COCT currently has permission from NERSA to waive the net consumer requirement. There is surely no impediment to COJ seeking the same waiver?

The other part of their current package is an extra 25c per unit incentive over and above the NERSA rate. Maybe they take that off some other part of the bill. 

But I'm open to offers. The guys who came out today were technical and in a hurry, so they weren't going to talk tariffs. I'd hoped they would. 

 

22 hours ago, JayMardern said:

On a sunny day in JHB I now have over 25 spare units per day (!) to feedback to the grid - but it's unfortunately going to end up costing me significant money to do so - so it simply goes to waste.

 

I would guess there is no political will to make it work up here in Gauteng. 

Just need to look at how meetings are conducted and broken bottles......... 

9 minutes ago, Scorp007 said:

I would guess there is no political will to make it work up here in Gauteng. 

Just need to look at how meetings are conducted and broken bottles......... 

I posted a link to an article that compares feed-in tariffs for three metros in SA (the 4th, COJ, says they don't have tariff information at this time). I see nothing to change my old suspicion that they don't want us feeding in. Maybe because of some technical issue that they haven't resolved, or maybe for political reasons. Which makes it even more interesting that COCT are making such a thing of this (though a strictly time limited thing, folks need to read the small print).

Durban, for example, has a better per unit rate than Cape Town, but they charge R120 odd per month per rated kWa of your inverter, so you have to sell back a lot just to break even.

Tshwane say they pay 13c a unit that you sell back - that's just flat out insulting.

1 hour ago, Bobster. said:

I posted a link to an article that compares feed-in tariffs for three metros in SA (the 4th, COJ, says they don't have tariff information at this time). I see nothing to change my old suspicion that they don't want us feeding in. Maybe because of some technical issue that they haven't resolved, or maybe for political reasons. Which makes it even more interesting that COCT are making such a thing of this (though a strictly time limited thing, folks need to read the small print).

Durban, for example, has a better per unit rate than Cape Town, but they charge R120 odd per month per rated kWa of your inverter, so you have to sell back a lot just to break even.

Tshwane say they pay 13c a unit that you sell back - that's just flat out insulting.

That R120/kVA of inverter size is a killer for Durban metro. 

We can just hope when the dust has settled that more metros will follow CoCT. 

It for sure us not a time to be selfish by being gappy to accept PV during the day and have low levels of LS but then complaining if you charge batteries after a LS session. 

2 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

That R120/kVA of inverter size is a killer for Durban metro. 

We can just hope when the dust has settled that more metros will follow CoCT. 

It for sure us not a time to be selfish by being gappy to accept PV during the day and have low levels of LS but then complaining if you charge batteries after a LS session. 

But this is why COCT are an outlier - they have somewhere to store that power they get during the day. Steenbras gives them options that other metros don't have. 

Though you'd think that COJ (to pick my home town) would have been able to take some of the sting out of stage 2 during the day today, which would have helped businesses 

So the journey is completed. And the engineer who represented me works on public holidays. 

I received the letter today. It tells me "Your installation has been approved based on your compliance to regulatory standards and Municipality Electricity supply By-Laws, as stipulated in your completed application form." 

It ties my inverter to a specific meter and a specific stand. 

It tells me that "City Power appreciates your efforts on ‘Going Green’ and being energy wise." 

It's a form letter. It has some wording about being switched to a TOU tariff, but it's ambiguous and the way I read it, it only applies to post-paid accounts. I've asked for clarification. We'll soon see, because they will need to reprogram my meter if it's not to be used for pre-paid. 

Edited March 21, 20242 yr by Bobster.

9 hours ago, Bobster. said:

So the journey is completed. And the engineer who represented me works on public holidays. 

I received the letter today. It tells me "Your installation has been approved based on your compliance to regulatory standards and Municipality Electricity supply By-Laws, as stipulated in your completed application form." 

It ties my inverter to a specific meter and a specific stand. 

It tells me that "City Power appreciates your efforts on ‘Going Green’ and being energy wise." 

It's a form letter. It has some wording about being switched to a TOU tariff, but it's ambiguous and the way I read it, it only applies to post-paid accounts. I've asked for clarification. We'll soon see, because they will need to reprogram my meter if it's not to be used for pre-paid. 

Thank you for the info and detailed update. 

And here's what I got at the end of the day (names and numbers redacted).
 

Final Approval Redacted.pdf

Hello @Bobster, congrats for finalising your SSEG registration!
Would you please let us know- are they really switched your tarif from Pre-paid to Post-Paid or never bother to do it? Thanks!

24 minutes ago, Rou said:

Hello @Bobster, congrats for finalising your SSEG registration!
Would you please let us know- are they really switched your tarif from Pre-paid to Post-Paid or never bother to do it? Thanks!

I remain on pre-paid. AIUI, anybody who wants to sell back has to switch to the TOU tariff, but I don't want to sell back. If the tariffs changed to make that more attractive I might reconsider my position, but right now I can't even break even on it, I lose. I would rather give my excess production away and not be charged for that.

Interesting fact: There are over 1.4 million households in Johannesburg, but less than 284 000 pre-paid meters. I'd have thought that pre-paid was such an obviously good deal that everybody would have made the move, but it seems not.

Going forward it will be less attractive a proposition, and it is clear that COJ's strategy is to reduce the difference between pre- and post-paid.

All pre-paid users should be raising their voices here. At the moment the new tariffs are PROPOSED, not actual, and there is time to object (to the City, not to each other on social media). I went along to the IDP session for my region and told the MMCs (they were all there) that pre-paid users are no risk to the City, pay in advance which is good for the City's cash flow, and so the fixed fees are unjustifiable. I don't know if this will make a blind bit of difference, but at least I can say I spoke out about it.

There is still about a week to get input in (objections or suggestions about how money should be spent or raised).