Penalising Solar- You Cannot Steal From The Sun
Eskom who is the SOE electricity supplier is anti solar installations as this directly impacts their revenue. The households and businesses that can afford to install solar were the clients they relied on to pay their electricity bills. Due to constant load shedding (18 years) and lack of service people have had enough and found alternative energy.
Eskom has been threatening legal action for the last year now saying all these solar installations are illegal even though they are actually helping take the strain off the grid. You cannot make this stuff up as ideocracy and greed is behind their thinking and there is no logic or common sense.
This week a news story appeared stating that Eskom was going to use satellite technology to map which properties had solar installations and they were going to come after them. The argument they have is you need to register your solar system with Eskom. Blackrock is an investor in Eskom having invested in their debt and I would not put it past them that they are pulling the strings.
This is another money making scheme where once you have registered an Eskom affiliated engineer will come and sign off your installation. Mine has a COC and is legitimate having a registered qualified installer and I am not going to do anything. If the rules change then I will look at this before March 26 and will wait and see how this plays out first as rules change so fast here.
NERSA which is the National Energy Regulator South Africa states all systems have to be registered even if you do not feed back to the grid. Many argued this was no different from a generator being used to combat load shedding yet they stand by the registration which needs to be done by March 2026.
City Power my service provider wants to charge myself R30K or $1.7K just to register the solar installation. This will require them sending an engineer to check the installation is correct which I have a CoC already. I am better off spending the R30K making my system bigger by adding another 1 or 2 batteries plus more solar panels. This increasing the size was going to happen anyway as their HomeFlex supply rates for solar households and businesses is like a double tariff if you use the grid. They are penalizing anyone for going the solar route and not embracing this.
This is all about penalties and how extra income can be generated as we all know the African mentality is that those who can afford such luxuries can help subsidies those who cannot. Eskom said that those solar installations feeding into the grid raised extra challenges like safety and performance so if you don't feed into the grid and have no intention of feeding the grid where is the problem? Offering me credits for feeding the grid when the plan is to never use the grid again does not benefit me one bit. Those credits would be reduced in value and would not represent what they would be charging anyway.
Recently certain areas where their is high electricity theft and non payments they had load generation which is different to load shedding, but exactly the same thing under a different name. I know someone who works for me and they said that the City power offices in their area had hundreds of cables running from their building going to houses in the area. These are all illegal connections running directly from the supplier and someone running the office is getting paid for this.
Corruption is everywhere you look and why I would like nothing to do with the grid and by the time March 26th arrives I will not be drawing 1Kwh from the grid. The municipality can cut my supply and it will make zero difference even if we have overcast weather because we will be prepared.
My attitude and thinking is what many others will be doing and instead of trying to claw back lost revenue through trying to be clever they will lose it all. The suns energy is free and yet the corrupt government is trying to charge for this even though you are losing less electricity helping the grid. There is so much negativity in this country due to no common sense and one can take so much before they say enough is enough and I am so happy I am making plans to leave.
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They are all crooks!
Definitely sounds like a good plan to leave that kind of country. Though governments everywhere are looking for extra revenue. Here in the states when democrat party is in power they raise taxes to pay for social safety net and other items on their agenda, when republicans come to power they always claim to be cutting taxes, but I have a Master degree in Accounting and let me tell you, they always raise taxes via sneaky provisions in their tax cut bills. Last time Trump cut taxes it cost me thousands of extra taxes every year this new "Big Beautiful Bill" is no different it has so many sneaky tax increases that it makes my head spin, and it didn't even pass yet...
A clear example of how economic interests and corruption can block progress and development in an important sector like electricity and clean energy.
Solar energy, a gift from the sun, symbolizes humanity’s capacity to harness nature’s abundance. Yet, Eskom’s punitive measure, threatening legal action and imposing high registration fee, demonstrates and reflects a fear of losing dominance. The incumbent always screams. Maybe Progress provokes resistance from those invested in the status quo.
The R30K registration fee and double tariffs for solar users feel like penalties for self-sufficiency.
That's a pretty terrible situation. I think the UK is very different with much less theft and corruption. Changing those is not easy even if the politicians try to do the right thing and you can't always rely on that.
Being off grid is the ideal, but it can be too expensive for many.
Just found this graph that shows huge growth in small (under 10kW) installations here, so people are investing in it.
It's been about 45 years since Idaho and Arizona first embraced net metering for solar. It means less strain on the grid at peak times of demand for air conditioning because the sun is strongest then, too. The bureaucratic demands and corporate collusion you describe are evidence of political corruption, like you said. There's no real economic gain, just an attempt to benefit from immediate political plunder at the expense of long-term solutions. Political entrepreneurs are mercantilist scum, but some vague caricature of "capitalism" will be blamed, especially if Blackrock is involved.
Political corruption is terrible and I have just about had enough as if it is not one thing it is something else.