1 hour ago, plonkster said:

Many many places in South Africa have a connection feel. You pay for the privilege of having the connection, and then you pay for whatever you use on top

I am still of the opinion that this is the wrong approach for a long term sustainable win win situation. I would make it as attractive as possible to buy and sell as much electricity to the City as possible. Offer very attractive low demand purchase and high demand selling prices to the consumers. This would encourage households to invest more in storage capacity and reduce the need for expensive grid peak load and distribution capacity. As long as Cape Town is not officially allowed to purchase electricity this is obviously going nowhere and will drive more and more customers off grid.

Seeing as Eskom is now going to be split, Generation, Transmission and Distribution, it opens a few new doors.

CoCT and other Munic's are paying their own Distribution costs, so a fee per connection is fair as it is a nett costs, no profit taking by the Munic's.

So now with Eskom being split, maybe the next door opening is Generation. Munic's are already paying their own Distribution costs, now allow Munic's to buy local Generation ... once the law has changed.

We just need to figure out how, if the Munic goes local for Generation now too, how to pay for the national Generation and Transmission, as we cannot get away from that.

And don't think Me, Myself and I ... think suburb, town, city (STC). Eskom is still going to be required unless that STC goes off grid ... do the STC have the finances for that?

I THINK that maybe CoCT is the closets to that, becoming self sufficient, off-grid from Eskom. 

A lot is riding on May 8 to be able to continue on this path of getting the City off-grid. 🙂 

If the water crisis does not derail the City again ... as nothing on National level has been done to fix future droughts. Maybe we must change that law too. 

 

EDIT: Imagine the anti-islanding headache if a STC has a hybrid solution and Eskom goes off ... 

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by Guest

@TTT CoCT is already purchasing Generation local in a sense. From themselves to be exact. Steenbras pumped storage. So there must be a loophole in the law already for them to be able to do this.

CoCT your (STC) is already "islanding" when Eskom was doing load shedding last year. So we kinda have a lot of these ducks in a row from a grid management perspective. 

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by root
additional info

4 hours ago, plonkster said:

Yup. And again, like typical South Africans, lots of people assume malice.

That paper speaks to residential solar as target group, not to typical South Africans.

4 hours ago, plonkster said:

the "connection fee" got bundled into the unit price, and now they are unbundling it, and you are absolutely right:

So the unit price will go down, once unbundled? 

4 hours ago, plonkster said:

This is to ensure that you still pay for the maintenance of the grid when you start cutting on your consumption.

Will it affect everybody based on the size of their supply connection.

Or because some people electrons can flow in a different direction do the wires needs more maintenance and therefore they warrant an extra charge?

That's patently untrue.

I think the paper is clear, the driver for the charge is they'll sell your extra on at a profit, but whatever shortfall they lose in lack of sales to you they charge you for anyway.

 

4 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

That paper speaks to residential solar as target group, not to typical South Africans.

Wasn't referring to the paper, just the general reaction I perceive from users when they hear there will be an extra to pay.

4 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

So the unit price will go down, once unbundled? 

Correct. For those of us already ported to Home Tariff, this is what happened: On the residential tariff, I would have paid R2.1032 per kwh for the first 600kwh, so 600kwh costs R1261.92. On the Home Tariff I now pay R1.8532 per kwh, plus the R150 flat fee, so 600kwh now costs exactly the same, also R1261.92.

What Cape Town did is to move people in nice houses (over a million) to Home Tariff. People who live in also-nice-but-less-so houses (400k-1M) are placed on domestic tariff. Those below 400k get either domestic OR lifeline depending on how much is used. Even here, 600kwh costs pretty much the same regardless of what tariff you are on.

So what this means is people living in nice houses (pretty much everyone with a solar array will have one of those) who also use less than 600kwh a month... those people will end up paying more than they used to. I am perfectly okay with that.

36 minutes ago, root said:

CoCT

Root! I assume that's unix related. Wonder how many people got that 🙂

3 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Root! I assume that's unix related. Wonder how many people got that 🙂

Indeed, I spend most of my days jumping from one terminal to the next in various parts of the world. 😉

8 minutes ago, plonkster said:

So what this means is people living in nice houses (pretty much everyone with a solar array will have one of those) who also use less than 600kwh a month... those people will end up paying more than they used to. I am perfectly okay with that.

I am not OK with making my own power and being charged extra.

It is an exploitative charge levied  by a monopoly because I am saving money and they can, and it has no causal relationship with the service delivered.

 

Just now, root said:

Indeed, I spend most of my days jumping from one terminal to the next in various parts of the world. 😉

Me too. Thousands of little ARM-based computers all over the place 🙂

Just now, phil.g00 said:

I am not OK with making my own power and being charged extra.

It is an exploitative charge levied  by a monopoly because I am saving money and they can, and it has no causal relationship with the service delivered. 

You're not charged extra. You are merely charged separately for the grid connection. It costs the same to maintain the grid regardless of how much you use. Even if you used nothing and kept the grid only as a backup source, it would still cost the same to maintain those things.

It is a bit like the many families with a swimming pool, who spends thousands maintaining them in case the kids and the wife MIGHT want to swim...

To put it differently, it's not that they are treating you badly... they are being nice to the sub-million crowd by subsidising their connection fee. In time they will move more people to home tariff, Cape Town is quite ruthless when it comes to such things. Every year they move a block of Lifeline leachers to Domestic... but they always do it in small increments to contain the outcry. Agree or not... someone has to pay for this stuff. In an ideal world, there'd be no handouts and everyone would pay their own way.

I actually like that they are unbundling the connection fee. It's simply not sustainable to take it from a declining sales amount. Once everyone pays the true cost of the connection, it should actually make it cheaper to feed energy into the grid. Right now they charge in excess of R400 a month if you want to feed in... technically... once everyone pays for their connection... there'd be no reason to charge solar people more.

Counter-intuitively, in the long run, this might help solar adoption.

1 minute ago, plonkster said:

You're not charged extra. You are merely charged separately for the grid connection. It costs the same to maintain the grid regardless of how much you use. Even if you used nothing and kept the grid only as a backup source, it would still cost the same to maintain those things.

I'll go along with this, a maximum demand charge is fairer though, (but subsidizing the less well off is an social justification).

 

5 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Right now they charge in excess of R400 a month if you want to feed in... technically... once everyone pays for their connection... there'd be no reason to charge solar people more.

This is the charge I am rebelling against, this extra charge, not the standard connection charge.

1 minute ago, phil.g00 said:

I'll go along with this, a maximum demand charge is fairer though, (but subsidizing the less well off is an social justification).

I agree. In fact, even just TOU tariffs (time of use) will already help a lot. Though I can tell you people will be very upset about that... breakfast and supper times... nice and expensive.

2 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

This is the charge I am rebelling against, this extra charge, not the standard connection charge.

Understood! Yes, it does seem disproportionate for no reason, but I hope that in time it is going to meet in the middle. They will carefully increase the connection fee on the lower end and herd households onto the home tariff (just enough every year to contain an uprising), and eventually the additional service fee for feed-in might disappear, or be low enough that nobody cares.

3 minutes ago, plonkster said:

They will carefully increase the connection fee on the lower end and herd households onto the home tariff (just enough every year to contain an uprising), and eventually the additional service fee for feed-in might disappear,

So just so I have it clear ( 'coz I am not in Cape town)

Your standard residential solar owner is faced with:

Option one ( No feed in):

R150 standing charge + usage charge ( same as everyone else in bracket).

Anything else?

Option two (Feed in capability):

R150 standing charge + R400 feed in charge + usage charge (same as everyone else) + cost of special meter - generation payment (not yet implemented).

Anything else or less?

 

14 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

Option one ( No feed in):

R150 standing charge + usage charge ( same as everyone else in bracket). 

Correct.

14 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

Option two (Feed in capability):

R150 standing charge + R400 feed in charge + usage charge (same as everyone else) + cost of special meter - generation payment (not yet implemented). 

Not quite. The R400 replaces the R150. Well, it's R14.21 a day, so it is more like R425 in the average month. But it is still almost R300 more than the other guy pays. But the story also doesn't end there...

On the SSEG tariff, your cost per kwh is even lower! You pay R1.3826 per kwh (compared to R1.8532 on the home tariff). So again, if you bought 600kwh from them, you would pay:

600*1.3826 + 425 = R829.56 + 425 = R1254.56. Again... very similar to the rest of us, but carefully set up so that the connection fee becomes proportionally larger if you use significantly less than 600kwh.

14 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

cost of special meter

And there is also that of course... the once-off over 10k fee for the meter.

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by plonkster

I did a bit of analysis, and it really seems that all the tariffs are designed to meet at 600KWH. No matter what tariff you are on, whether it be lifeline, domestic or sseg, the first 600kwh costs roughly the same. After that, everyone is treated the same and you pay R2.5575 (even legit LifeLine users). But on the SSEG tariff you get a rebate which you don't get on the others.

7 minutes ago, plonkster said:

But on the SSEG tariff you get a rebate which you don't get on the others.

This rebate, is this in lieu of payment for any generation?

29 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

This rebate, is this in lieu of payment for any generation?

Correct. They can't buy it from you legally, so instead they give you a "discount" on whatever you buy from them. You get around 85 cents for each kwh you "sell", so as an example, if you bought 100kwh after hours and put in 100kwh again during the day (ie you are grid neutral), then you will pay R138 for what you took out, discounted by R85 for what you put in, so your total cost does come down a bit. But it can never be zero.

My point is that for anyone using close to 600kwh (or more), the SSEG tariff really does cost less (if you ignore the cost of the smart meter that you have to foot yourself). 600KWH costs pretty much the same on all tariffs... but the SSEG one gives something back.

The people who are losing on the deal are those using less than about 550kwh a month... but who live in nice houses.

7 minutes ago, plonkster said:

You get around 85 cents for each kwh you "sell", so as an example, if you bought 100kwh after hours and put in 100kwh again during the day (ie you are grid neutral), then you will pay R138 for what you took out, discounted by R85 for what you put in, so your total cost does come down a bit.

Will my bill be R135 - R85 =R50 or is the R85 discount built in to the R135 charge already?

 

Is my charge at the lower rate based on a nett 600kWh usage, or am I on the higher rate as soon as I import an absolute value >600kWh/pm?

Or does my generation discount/rate change if I export >600kWh/pm?

 

2 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

Will my bill be R135 - R85 =R50 or is the R85 discount built in to the R135 charge already?

If I understand it correctly, you'll pay R50 for 100 units in this example.

3 minutes ago, phil.g00 said:

am I on the higher rate as soon as I import an absolute value >600kWh/pm? 

The moment you import over 600, then for the rest of the month you are at the higher rate (around R2.55). You still get back only 85 cents on the rebate.

So based on the fact that it's a discount, they won't discount you if you generate more units than you use.

So lets consider two scenario's, both energy neutral and the same system (in both cases) capable of generating, but also capable of limiting the infeed.

Using 600kWh/pm from the grid and generating 600kWh pm to be energy neutral would cost R425 + (6x R50 nett.) = R725pm.

And you'd need a R10K meter.

Or alternatively, lets say no in-feed using your own 600kWh/pm  but also energy neutral (throttling the inverters to forego your discount):

Would cost R150 + 0 + no fancy meter.

That looks like it would cost R725-R150 = R575/pm + a R10K meter for the privilege of providing the COCT with 600kWh of power to sell.

Which they would in turn sell on for (R1.85 X 600), and the COCT is actually getting your R575 on top of that.

I presume there is a slow take up on the "sell power back to the grid" option.

 

 

 

 

Let me explain it with a picture. KWh on the X axis, cost in ZAR on the Y axis.

For most people that will install solar, the blue line is not available. The choice is between the red and yellow lines. The Yellow line includes a rebate that is not visualised here, in other words, it is possible to pull the yellow line closer or lower than the red one. For anyone using north of 500KWh a month, there is a very good chance that you'll benefit from being on the SSEG tariff.

I wish I had this idea earlier... just plot it. I suppose that's about as close as you get to proving just how ruthlessly fair they are.

Edited February 8, 20197 yr by plonkster
Swapped picture for better one

While I was at it, I also added the Lifeline Tariff. The poorest of the poor gets 60KWh free, then one level up only 25KWh free.

My crystal ball says:
When Eskom does not come right now that it is going to be split and CoCT is "forced" more and more to supply in order to keep on attracting international and local investment, then they will buy from each and every solar owner, at the then going Eskom rates. CoCT is known to go where no other Munic has gone.

At that time they will:
1) Supply and fit free of charge a bi-direction meter - as it is their meter.
2) Put in place an agreement that the solar owner will give X kWh per annum free to them to do as they see fit.
3) A connection fee of +-R500-R600 pm to cover maintenance, computer system upgrades and admin fees of the above.

They get free electricity to sell on / give for free, their costs are contained, solar owner can make a profit.

Win win.

Versus common sense saying, if they don't play ball: 
As battery storage costs become lower more and more people will simply disconnect from their grid.

PS. Can happen with the water costs too. We now know how to do it, and the new connection fee and increased costs per kl being a nuisance, till they increase that too. 

If I've got my math completely right, this is the picture for someone who exports 50% back of what he imports, ie he exports 10kwh during the day, and imports 20kwh total. This actually looks pretty attractive, it's even kicking lifeline towards the end there... see guys... how the rich gets all the benefits... 😛