‘Tshwane lags in efforts to buy solar power from residents’ – expert

As government shifts its focus to adding as much new energy generation to Eskom’s grid as possible, an expert has warned that Tshwane is lagging in regulating solar power.

His views come after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced changes to the regulations on power generation to allow municipalities to procure power independently.

The change means those who plan to install solar panels at their homes or businesses would be able to sell their surplus power to Eskom or the municipality.

Ramaphosa encouraged businesses and households to invest in rooftop solar power generation, which would see owners being well remunerated.

“Eskom will develop rules and a pricing structure – known as a feed-in tariff – for all commercial and residential installations on its network,” he said.

“South Africa has a great abundance of sun, which we should use to generate electricity. There is significant potential for households and businesses to install rooftop solar.”

Ramaphosa said load-shedding could be fought by removing barriers to new generation and unlocking energy from many different sources including Eskom, independent power producers, businesses and households.

Energy expert from Alumo Energy Gerhard Schoeman said many municipalities including Tshwane were, however, not on the right track in easing the regulations for businesses and residents looking to get off the Eskom grid.

“Metros like Tshwane are lagging behind others at the moment as their processes for small-scale embedded generators (SSEG) registration is not functioning as it should,” he said.

According to Schoeman, clients were not successful in registering their systems to receive a feed-in payback from SSEG.

He said, however, that because of the recent frustration brought by stage 6 load-shedding, he hoped that the Tshwane council would speedily resolve the matter.

Schoeman said that the Cape Town metro led in terms of solar power regulation, SSEG registration processes and feed-in tariffs paid to consumers.

“Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni are now improving their SSEG registration systems but are lagging in paying out feed-in tariffs.”

Schoeman said an increase in the feed-in tariff was important as it would enable clients to invest more in off-the-grid power generation infrastructure.

“It would enable clients to utilise their assets 100%.” Read also The Cost Benefits of Solar Power in South Africa

“Normally, a residential solar system produces energy at its highest production from between 10:00 to 15:00, when there is low usage in the home,” he said, adding that this resulted in energy being wasted.

Schoeman said increasing the feed-in tariff the payback period on the investments would be brought down, which would make investing in solar more attractive to residents.

“The increase will allow the market to move from early adoption phase to mainstream adoption, thereby reducing the strain on the national power utility [quicker].”

He said a greater uptake of power generation by communities would also reduce moving costs from power stations, usually far from city centres, to the customer because the user and the generator would be located close to each other.

He said residents who want to sell their excess to the municipality needed to register and be approved first.

“Thereafter, they would have to change their meter to one that is bi-directional.”

There was no minimum amount of power the resident needed to produce to become a power provider to the municipality or Eskom.

A client would, however, need to generate more power than their household consumed.

Schoeman recommended a system on the approved NRS 97-2-1 list with a five-year inverter warranty and a 10-year battery warranty.

“This system will be in the region of R140 000 for a 5Kwh Inverter, 5 Kwh battery and 12 solar panels with the production of 400W each.”

Schoeman said the mentioned size of the solar power system was large enough to take a household off the grid by 40% if the monthly electricity bill was about R4 000 per month.

“This system can be rented from Alumo Energy at R2 424 per month, with savings of about R1 700 per month in electricity costs.”

“A similarly sized midway quality system with a two-year warranty on the inverter and five-year warranty on the battery is around R100 000 with installation.”

He said the City of Cape Town offered 85c per kW while Tshwane offered 10c per kW but still the “Tshwane residents are not able to get their systems registered”.

The Tshwane metro had yet to respond to enquiries on their plan to ramp up independent power production.

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