The City of Cape Town’s plan to make it easier for ordinary consumers to sell excess solar power to their municipality is attracting a lot of attention . . . and the question of what impact it will have can partially be answered by looking at data from a town in the Northern Cape.
THE CITY of Cape Town’s plan to make it easier for ordinary consumers to sell excess solar power to their municipality is attracting a lot of attention . . . and the question of what impact it will have can partially be answered by looking at data from a town in the Northern Cape.
From June this year Cape Town will start paying cash to commercial and industrial customers to feed excess power generated from small-scale embedded generators (SSEGs) back into its municipal grid.
Because of continuous load shedding more and more South Africans are investing in rooftop solar panels, diesel generators and other means of electricity generation.
Cape Town’s announcement was made after the National Treasury authorised the city to deviate from prescribed procurement requirements in purchasing electricity from SSEG generators, allowing officials to directly enter into purchase agreements with such generators.
In the Northern Cape the town of Orania has been buying power from households and businesses since 2019. The city council decided to make it as easy as possible to register as a producing power consumer and to earn an appealing amount per unit – presently it is R1.51 per kW/h.
As a result, many of the households and businesses that have converted to solar power have also retained their connection to the town’s power grid, spokesperson for Orania, Wynand Boshoff, said in a statement.
“A solar farm aimed exclusively at supplying power to the town is another result. There are some households that disconnect from the grid or that never connected to it at all. Then there are also those who install solar systems, but fail to register for the buy-back agreement. That means there is additional generation capacity that cannot be taken into account with formal calculations.
“Uncertainties aside, within just four years Orania has reached a point where 33% of all the power that is consumed is generated by residents themselves. The consequences of this are far-reaching,” he said.
Traditionally, Eskom invests in generation capacity. It is collected from municipalities in the form of a levy, which is saved in this case.
“Moreover, the monthly electricity consumption bill is one of the biggest drains of local economies. Re-circulating a third of it translates to a significant investment in the local economy, without additional costs.
“Lastly, the possibility exists that the entire town could be exempted from load shedding if storage capacity is added. Households and businesses that are already doing this no longer have to take this prominent characteristic of life in South Africa into account. To supply power to the grid during load shedding could justify a more attractive tariff, which will, in turn, stimulate more investment.
“This is an example of a community that priorities investing in its own economy, which enables it to provide valuable information to local authorities that are moving at a slower pace,” he concluded
