Hi All

I am in the final throws of planning my move to electricity self sufficiency and part of this would be disconnecting from City Power.

I just need a little assistance with my understanding. The CoC will prove that the inverter has no incoming feed from City Power. I will use this to then request Disconnection from City Power and as such no solar registration is required as I have no potential to influence the grid.

Is this correct?

Thanks

David

2 hours ago, OceanWanderer said:

I will use this to then request Disconnection from City Power

Requesting a disconnection should have nothing to do with your CoC or inverter.

4 hours ago, OceanWanderer said:

Hi All

I am in the final throws of planning my move to electricity self sufficiency and part of this would be disconnecting from City Power.

I just need a little assistance with my understanding. The CoC will prove that the inverter has no incoming feed from City Power. I will use this to then request Disconnection from City Power and as such no solar registration is required as I have no potential to influence the grid.

Is this correct?

Thanks

David

As @frivan says. A COC is not required when disconnecting. Only when creating a new connection to the grid.

4 hours ago, OceanWanderer said:

disconnecting from City Power.

They will make it as difficult as possible (read - impossible) to disconnect! Hope you have better luck 🤞

Thanks all!

Demo's comment is what worries me the most, as I have this from others, but getting rid of City Power very quickly would have paid for my solar upgrade within 3 years if the proposed forced change from pre-paid to post paid comes into effect.

This then leaves me having to register, last quote I had was R6k for al of the documentation submission etc and waiting to see.

My understanding is not registering may be playing with fire financially and not making use of the amnesty?

David

2 hours ago, OceanWanderer said:

Thanks all!

Demo's comment is what worries me the most, as I have this from others, but getting rid of City Power very quickly would have paid for my solar upgrade within 3 years if the proposed forced change from pre-paid to post paid comes into effect.

This then leaves me having to register, last quote I had was R6k for al of the documentation submission etc and waiting to see.

My understanding is not registering may be playing with fire financially and not making use of the amnesty?

David

I am currently in the process of getting disconnected. I wouldnt say its impossible, the biggest hurdle I faced which cause some 5 visits to COJ was the fact that noone knows how its done. It could be just the COJ office I was at who knows. Now I am just waiting for a quote to do it. I had applied for disconnection in December so everyone including the people that quote where on leave. Otherwise I have completed all the documentation and its on their system. Just a case of quote, I pay, and they remove. Hoping that its finalised by February.

This is no different that the stories I heard about people doing Postpaid to Prepaid conversions when it was still allowed. It took most no less than a month, and another lady I know took ehr 3 months. With back and forth etc. If you are willing to make the visits and take the time to do it, then it can be done. Nothing is easy with COJ (Note I am not saying CP as all this is done at COJ).

I am a believer of its their network, their rules. If Solar users want the luxury of using them as a battery, and overload backup then register and follow their rules. They will start enforcing it properly and when they do, I see people spending upwards of 15k to do their registrations etc. I did not want to register and continue paying the 1400 rand in fixed charges I am currently paying on postpaid so I elected to disconnect.

Hi Denns

Thank you so much, this is exactly the information I have been looking for! Greatly appreciated!

Given the COJ disconnection challenge (I felt this when I applied for pre-paid - took 6 months; funnily enough going to CP directly got it sorted that afternoon), the process, time available and my own household readiness I have decided to pause on the upgrade.

I agree with your sentiments with regards the registration and have asked my installer to add me to their registration list. I could not find definitive documentation that states off grid does not require registration in Joburg. All I could find was that in CoCT you dont register per se but notify. So, I figure this will need to be done now or at some future point if we ever wanted to sell and I also agree that to take advantage of the "amnesty" so to speak will save money in the long run.

I am currently feeling like an "at conversion to post paid" risk individual once registered but time and the municipal process will tell. My take on this is if I can eek out enough months on my pre-paid account those count as non-post paid months and that will cover the registration cost.

If you dont mind sharing, how are you going to deal with the possibility of 10 days worth of gloomy skies? My thoughts immediately jumped to retro-fitting the geyser with solar tubes and coupling a generator. Sadly my budget didnt allow for much more than a 3kw silent so that posed a challenge to charge the batteries as the genie would effectively run all day to charge the upgraded battery pack.

Thanks again!

David

39 minutes ago, OceanWanderer said:

If you dont mind sharing, how are you going to deal with the possibility of 10 days worth of gloomy skies? My thoughts immediately jumped to retro-fitting the geyser with solar tubes and coupling a generator. Sadly my budget didnt allow for much more than a 3kw silent so that posed a challenge to charge the batteries as the genie would effectively run all day to charge the upgraded battery pack.

Your sentiment towards how to deal with extended days of rain and wanting the grid as backup is my theory as to why COJ was not knowledgeable about the off-grid application process as there is so little people doing it they dont get the applications often enough to know.

On my side, I havent needed the grid since April if I am not mistaken. Around September that is when my geyser was taken off Citipower and was then completely off the grid. Amazingly I ahve been completely fine. But it is easy for me I suspect because my monthly consumption is never higher than 300kWh. My daily is around 10kWh and when there is rain I just switch off the pool pump, tank heater and fish pond pump and my consumption drops to 5kWh a day. The Geyser is always hot also despite being on solar (Geyser controller) so that aids in lasting the bad cloudy days.

I have enough panels to generate about 25kWh not counting the geyser panels so its easy to see why I dont have issues with extended cloudy days. I already generate 2.5 times the house requriement and with load reduction (pumps off) I do 5x that. An hour of Sun and I am fine with my array.

Because of this I have no intention of buying a generator. So going off-grid makes sense for me. And I still have the entire house roof to add panels for whenever the power requirements go up. But I survived just fine with 5 people in the house the whole of December so it will only happen at a much later date to do the upgrades.

Hi Denns

Thank you so much for all of this information and congratulations on achieving electricity independence.

My usage is slightly higher with a pool, geyser, appliances etc. (I have attached the generation stats for fun if you want to take a peek)

I started in 2022 with a small system (10 x 450w panels, 7kw battery & 8kw inverter) with the intention being to scale when the time came which I thought was now!

I posted the same question on a different forum and interestingly there was a very similar train of thought, invest in more energy generation via panels as opposed to a generator (a little bit from a lot makes enough). Funnily enough I noticed yesterday, that during the cloudy morning I was generating 10% of the potential, so if the maximum potential is 25kw at a 10% potential generation that is enough to charge batteries and run the office and fridge!

Not sure if I am limited by my inverter as my maximum potential PV input on my inverter (SunSynk) is 10kw or perhaps I am I misunderstanding that and I can have 25kw connected but maximum draw is 10kw?, Fortunately I do have available roof space, facing West - my current panels face true North.

Thank you once again for all of your input!

Cheers

David

2 hours ago, OceanWanderer said:

Not sure if I am limited by my inverter as my maximum potential PV input on my inverter (SunSynk) is 10kw or perhaps I am I misunderstanding that and I can have 25kw connected but maximum draw is 10kw?,

Your maximum is indeed 10kw - you cannot have 25kw input to your solar, the white smoke will appear!! I think what @Denns meant with his 25kw available - this is for the full day.

1 hour ago, Demo said:

Your maximum is indeed 10kw - you cannot have 25kw input to your solar, the white smoke will appear!! I think what @Denns meant with his 25kw available - this is for the full day.

Yes, its 25kWh. Not kW if this is what he was implying. My inverter is only rated for a max of 4kW but I have 4.55kW installed.

I think CP might not have a disconnection process worked out. Thinking about it, it's got to be more than removing their breaker and the meter. That's just giving us permission to connect for free. So they have to remove some of the cable. That's not easy. And I would bet that until recently nobody was coming to them and saying "please disconnect me".

Like @Denns I have a low consumption household - not THAT low though - and I am actually quite close to being able to go off grid. I would want to test first. The one obvious problem is the lawn mower. It has an electric motor and pulls about 2kW when it's running, but to start up it briefly draws in the order of 7kW and that will trip my inverter every time.

So make sure you really can go off grid. All you need is what I have - one load that wants a lot of power just as it starts up - and then you may wish you had that connection back.

I do actually have an alternative - an old push mower. Or a new, old-style push mower. I bought this when we had stage 6 shedding. It's more work, but I have lots of time on my hands now.

But when I come to sell one day, I don't want to tell a buyer, or have him find out, that he can't run his lawn mower. That is not going to make him feel lekker about the place. I could stipulate that the system is limited to 20 amps. I expect we will be in this situation quite soon when people realise that buying an off-grid house means having to make life style changes that might not suit them. Folks do like convenience.

1 hour ago, Bobster. said:

I think CP might not have a disconnection process worked out. Thinking about it, it's got to be more than removing their breaker and the meter. That's just giving us permission to connect for free. So they have to remove some of the cable. That's not easy. And I would bet that until recently nobody was coming to them and saying "please disconnect me".

Like @Denns I have a low consumption household - not THAT low though - and I am actually quite close to being able to go off grid. I would want to test first. The one obvious problem is the lawn mower. It has an electric motor and pulls about 2kW when it's running, but to start up it briefly draws in the order of 7kW and that will trip my inverter every time.

So make sure you really can go off grid. All you need is what I have - one load that wants a lot of power just as it starts up - and then you may wish you had that connection back.

I do actually have an alternative - an old push mower. Or a new, old-style push mower. I bought this when we had stage 6 shedding. It's more work, but I have lots of time on my hands now.

But when I come to sell one day, I don't want to tell a buyer, or have him find out, that he can't run his lawn mower. That is not going to make him feel lekker about the place. I could stipulate that the system is limited to 20 amps. I expect we will be in this situation quite soon when people realise that buying an off-grid house means having to make life style changes that might not suit them. Folks do like convenience.

So there is multiple things to comment on here.

one can always reconnect (12k) when they want to sell the house. I pay 16.5k in fixed charges to stay connected to the grid. The obvious choice is to go offgrid.

Also, electricity prices and fixed charges are not going down. A person wanting to buy a home if they realise being offgrid saves them money might actually want it, especially if they already came rpm a solar home. Times are changing I South Africa and with most of Tshwane without power for days l, Roodepoort also being in trouble along with multiple other areas where substations are burning down, a solar home is definitely welcomed by most.

As for your lawn mower, my dad’s place is offgrid also and he has a 6.2kW inverter. He runs his lawnmower with no problem. I suspect you have those old lawnmowers.

I have a 3.6kW inverter and my Gardner runs the 2kW grass cutter without issues with the pool pump and TV running. But then again, it’s new so I guess that’s why it has not caused issues. Even the 2kW leaf blower runs fine also.

34 minutes ago, Denns said:

He runs his lawnmower with no problem. I suspect you have those old lawnmowers.

Well it wasn't bought last month, let's put it that way. Old Wolf.

13 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

Well it wasn't bought last month, let's put it that way. Old Wolf.

You will be amazed at how efficient modern tools and appliances are. My fridge for example is a 450 plus liter and draws only 70W. 75 inch TV only draws 180W. Etc.

I am fortunate everything in my house is new as I only purchased it around September 2024. Benefited me a lot with my small system.

3 minutes ago, Denns said:

You will be amazed at how efficient modern tools and appliances are. My fridge for example is a 450 plus liter and draws only 70W. 75 inch TV only draws 180W. Etc.

I found this out a couple of years ago. I wasn't sure about lawnmowers. Fridges, deep freezes, washing machines now are very efficient.

On 2026/01/13 at 4:53 PM, OceanWanderer said:

I just need a little assistance with my understanding. The CoC will prove that the inverter has no incoming feed from City Power. I will use this to then request Disconnection from City Power and as such no solar registration is required as I have no potential to influence the grid.

Is this correct?

Registration is required when any alternate source of power (usually this is solar) is wired to your grid connection and has the ability to send power back to the grid. So in your case it should not be required. Unless you already have the system installed and CP are going to get pedantic and say it should have been registered all along and so must be registered now etc etc.

If you have no grid connection you have nothing that can interact with the grid and so City Power have no interest.

There's been talk about this. I don't know if there is a process, but if there is it's not very clear to mere mortals such as us.

It would be very helpful if you document here what you had to do to get permanently disconnected.

Hi Bobster

Thank you so much!

Denns detailed the process above, unfortunately, I have decided I am not ready and so I am going to register.

David

20 hours ago, Denns said:

As for your lawn mower, my dad’s place is offgrid also and he has a 6.2kW inverter. He runs his lawnmower with no problem. I suspect you have those old lawnmowers.

The pool pump is now the biggest load in my house. The biggest instantaneous load by far is that lawn mower. To go off-grid I would need to get all my un-backed up loads moved over.

I am thinking along these lines
1) Run the inverter in off-grid mode for a day. This will test if we can cope with the steam iron which usually drives the inverter crazy and results in lots of short-lived draws from the grid. This will cost me some credit on my pre-paid because the pool pump (not backed up) will run off of the grid for a day.

2) If that goes OK, then I need to beg, borrow or buy a lawn mower made in the last 5 years and try to run that off the backed up circuits. I can use the Kill-A-Watt to get some readings of total and instaneous load.

3) If both go OK then I can have the PV system rewired with a switch to move the out buildings onto the backed up side of the inverter if I want. This allows me to run independently of the grid (which I can already do most days)

4) All the above being passed, request a disconnect.

26 minutes ago, OceanWanderer said:

Hi Bobster

Thank you so much!

Denns detailed the process above, unfortunately, I have decided I am not ready and so I am going to register.

David

I got my quote from CP an hour ago for them to remove my installation. 1083 rand. I will pay it tomorrow and then wait for CP to remove their installation. The whol process so far wasnt that bad. But I did get helped quite a bit by CP. They had to guide COJ on the process as COJ didnt even know it was a thing that can be done lol.

5 minutes ago, Bobster. said:

The pool pump is now the biggest load in my house. The biggest instantaneous load by far is that lawn mower. To go off-grid I would need to get all my un-backed up loads moved over.

I am thinking along these lines
1) Run the inverter in off-grid mode for a day. This will test if we can cope with the steam iron which usually drives the inverter crazy and results in lots of short-lived draws from the grid. This will cost me some credit on my pre-paid because the pool pump (not backed up) will run off of the grid for a day.

2) If that goes OK, then I need to beg, borrow or buy a lawn mower made in the last 5 years and try to run that off the backed up circuits. I can use the Kill-A-Watt to get some readings of total and instaneous load.

3) If both go OK then I can have the PV system rewired with a switch to move the out buildings onto the backed up side of the inverter if I want. This allows me to run independently of the grid (which I can already do most days)

4) All the above being passed, request a disconnect.

Its a bit of adjusting thats for sure. I have a gas and electric kettle, 90% of the time my wife uses the gas one as she understands we have a small inverter. My kettle was a 2000W one but I replaced it with a 1100W kettle so if guests come over and want to make a quick cup of tea they run that.

My iron was also replaced with a steamer. The steamer only draws about 900W and it was actually my wifes idea as she always wanted a steamer. She claims its quicker than ironing so I got a good deal there, less draw on the inverter and a happy wife lol.

Dishawasher and washing machine during heating cycles use 1400W. Microwave, 1700W. Air fryer, 1100W on the small side and 1400W on the larger side. I can easily run 2 of any of these items in the kitchen without issue even with the pool running.

My biggest power draw is the Oven. That draws about 1900W so when the wife wants to bake then care is taken to not turn any of the other high power kitchen applicances on. But the gardener can still run his tools, pool can run and people can be on their laptops and TV without the inverter overloading.

If I replace the inverter with anything over 6kW i think it would be a night and day difference for us. The fact that our lives are well adjusted to the 3.6kW inverter, anything more than that would be a breeze for us.

On 2026/01/14 at 8:28 AM, Denns said:

With back and forth etc. If you are willing to make the visits and take the time to do it, then it can be done. Nothing is easy with COJ (Note I am not saying CP as all this is done at COJ).

Yes. Things happen differently if you go straight to CP. It is not that they are unhelpful, but they are poorly led, starved for budget, and communications are bad.

The one time I actually went to the office was because my meter had gone pop. I remember that I left there just on 9:00 because I had a Teams meeting pending, and I called my boss to say that I might be a couple of minutes late and probably in the car. At 11:30 CP arrived to restore power to my property.

I also didn't have a long wait for pre-paid. Though it depends on when you deem the process to start. Once I accepted their quote things moved quite quickly.

These "queue for you" services can work actually. They know people inside the City and which offices they sit in. I recall getting a car I'd sold off of my name. I engaged a local company. The twist here is that you must present in person. So the agent says to me "meet me OUTSIDE the department at 9:00 on Tuesday. DO NOT go inside. DO NOT join any queue." When he arrives he says follows me, walks past all the queues and into some office. He then says to the guy behind the desk "this is the owner. Can we agree that he was here in person?". The guy behind the desk agrees. I get told that I can go and will be called when the documents are done. Or the guys who handled my SSEG registration. They just got me to sign a letter empowering them to act as my proxy for the purposes of SSEG registration. I did that and just got on with my life - no queuing, and more importantly no queuing all day to find out I'd been standing in the wrong queue.

Hi Bobster

My biggest loads are the pool and geyser.

I invested in petrol appliances for all of my major garden equipment when we bought our house (8.5 years ago). There is definitely a premium to pay and of course servicing every year, but the joy of no cord is priceless.

For my geyser, I am thinking of retro fitting a tube heater and seeing the difference that makes.

The pool is 0.75kw motor and there dont seem to be any affordable options to replace so I will control this via the breaker on grey days.

The overarching advice on this and another forum is to invest in more panels - the theory being a little from a lot on rainy days will keep the lights on and provide charge to the battery. I have seen this with my current array.

To upgrade my system is currently R82k, registration is R6k.

If the threat of a forced move to post paid (~R1400 per month) comes true then I will re-evaluate as the R1400 + consumption then comes in at R2150 so in four years the upgrade + registration would have been paid off.

I also have the registration should I want to sell and, and, and....

Hope this helps!

Cheers

David

10 minutes ago, Denns said:

I got my quote from CP an hour ago for them to remove my installation. 1083 rand.

Are there any variables in this? EG how far you are from the sub station? Where your meter is?

I presume that as with so many things to do with the City, your account has to be paid up and you may not be in dispute with the City.

12 minutes ago, Denns said:

I got my quote from CP an hour ago for them to remove my installation. 1083 rand. I will pay it tomorrow and then wait for CP to remove their installation. The whol process so far wasnt that bad. But I did get helped quite a bit by CP. They had to guide COJ on the process as COJ didnt even know it was a thing that can be done lol.

Congratulations! Please keep us posted on the progress!