Hi all.

I am based in Hillcrest/Durban which falls under ethekweni municipality.

To date there hasnt been a requirement to register our sseg system with them but am sure its coming along with some penalties for low usage.

Has anyone out there heard of any new info regarding solar and Ethekweni ?

Thanks

18 minutes ago, Nicholas Strachan said:

Hi all.

I am based in Hillcrest/Durban which falls under ethekweni municipality.

To date there hasnt been a requirement to register our sseg system with them but am sure its coming along with some penalties for low usage.

Has anyone out there heard of any new info regarding solar and Ethekweni ?

Thanks

I don't live in the last outpost. But I am fairly confident in saying that in fact all municipalities have regulations in place. Often it is not well publicised nor enforced. 

In Johannesburg the regulations have been on the books for at least 7 years, but there was little publicity about this. In the meantime there are stories doing the rounds about people who log a fault with City Power only for the technician to come along, see your solar and promptly remove your meter because the system is not registered. This hasn't happened to me or to any of my neighbours in my street. I think some of these cases are contractors looking for a back hander, but there are so many of these reports that I find it hard to dismiss all of this as some sort of misinformation that is doing the rounds. Having seen how some people feel entitled to talk to City Power employees, I also think there are some cases where tempers flare and the technician decides he doesn't have to be nice about anything. 

TLDR: There almost certainly are regulations for eThekweni, but they are not publicised and probably not very well enforced.

My system is registered now, and I have a nice letter from City Power to say that it's registered and thanking me for being concientious about power useage. So in the event that some technician who is having a bad day wants to start threatening me (this has never happened) I can prove that my system has been inspected by and is registered with the municipality. (And they did inspect - mostly safety aspects, and how the system behaves when the power goes down and when power is restored).

There is s a potential down side. Because it ties my property, the City's meter, and my inverter together. So, in theory, I can't change the inverter nor remove it from the property. This is not likely to be an issue for the next couple of years at least.