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Credit where credit is due – the City of Cape Town is pulling out all the stops to try and reduce its reliance on Eskom’s power grid

If Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis gets his way we could soon be kissing the power utility’s grid farewell for good. The city’s residents already benefit from reduced load shedding stages due to the Steenbras Hydro Pump Station.

In theory, the latest initiative allowing residents to sell excess power back to the city by introducing a cash incentive is a great move.

TimesLIVE reports that these plans would add to an initiative already in place whereby people can offset their municipal bills through excess power they generate:

“At the moment we give you a credit for the power you sell to us. So we allow you to run your council bill down to zero, if that’s how much you sell to us. But it cannot go further than zero,” said Hill-Lewis.

“We will now start paying people. We will EFT you for the power you sell us,” he added.

In order to benefit residents will need to apply to be suppliers once the initiative is formally announced.

Given how many people have installed solar power home systems in recent years, with Eskom’s woes seemingly worsening by the month, one would think there would be plenty of residents stepping forward to become suppliers.

Tyger Geldenhuis, the founder of solar installation company Trust Solar, explains why that won’t be the case:

According to Geldenhuis, based on the numbers, it’s not yet worth it and most of his clients don’t bother. “We’ve done more than 1,000 houses and I don’t think even one percent are selling back,” he said.

First, residents are charged a service tariff of about R450 a month by the city and have to install a bidirectional meter, which costs between R10,000 and R15,000.

Additionally, over a year residents must be net consumers, which means they must consume more power than they generate to sell back units.

Even if you take into consideration the new tariffs proposed by Eskom (they’re ghastly and actually punish homes which use less power), it’s deemed unlikely that the numbers will add up.

Peter Walsh, a Milnerton resident who paid around R200 000 to install a home solar power system, has calculated that he will recoup that cost in savings over a five-year period.

He’s not much bothered about selling the power back to the City, though:

“If you look at what the city requires of a home installation to ‘sell’ back to the city, it’s not viable. The money they pay you and the monthly subscription and investment make it a non-starter,” said Walsh.

Again, it’s refreshing to see that we’re trying to find creative solutions to the dearth of power coming via Eskom, even in the face of seemingly endless procurement, permissions, registration, and licensing red tape.

Perhaps the City will find a way to tweak the initiative in such a way that makes it more viable.

On the plus side, Eskom’s proposed national tariffs mentioned earlier will face stiff legal pushback from trade union Solidarity. Below from MyBroadband:

The union described Eskom’s application — which it has submitted to Nersa — as absurd, irrational, and unlawful…

“If Eskom does not want to be involved in solutions itself we will litigate until at least Eskom no longer stands in the way of others who want to solve the matter,” Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann said…

“Instead of encouraging private power generation, Eskom now wants to tax it. Paying tax for a service is one thing; to pay taxes for no service is something totally different,” Hermann stated.

The proposed tariffs would see a household which uses zero electricity in a month paying R938 just to remain connected to the Eskom supply.

It currently costs R218 to be connected to the grid before any power is used.

[sources:timeslive&mybb]