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Good news for Cape Town!

The city has announced that it will now pay cash for power fed into the local electricity grid.

Cape Town’s Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that the City will be paying businesses and residents cash for feeding their excess power into Cape Town’s grid from June this year.

If you were thinking of making the switch to solar, now is your chance – as it “just got more attractive”, Hill-Lewis said.

BusinessTech reports that the city wants to buy electricity from as many city-supplied customers as are willing to sell, who will then produce as much power as they can from their approved systems and feed it into Cape Town’s grid:

“The sale of excess power by homes and businesses with Small Scale Embedded Generation (SSEGs), among other generation solutions, will contribute to Cape Town’s goal of 4-stages load-shedding protection within three years.”

With this plan, the city will also pay customers an incentive over and above the Nersa-approved tariff “as they help us turn the corner on load-shedding,” the City said per Cape Talk:

The cost will be based on the Nersa tariff, which stands at 79 cents. Additionally, the City will add 25 cents per unit to make it more attractive, making the total R1.04/R1.05 per unit. The City says that over time, they’re looking to increase this number.

The idea behind this plan is to ultimately make load shedding voetsek, together with the City’s Independent Power Procurement programme and other incentives.

Apparently, payments will be made via EFT straight into business and residents’ bank accounts.

Hill-Lewis has noted that there is still a bit of technical work to ensure that the billing and payment system works properly.

Solar for the win: hamba Eskom, hamba wena.

[sources:businesstech&capetalk]