What’s this contract you have to enter into? That says to me Ts and Cs apply. Like they want to see a certain amount from you, or that they can pull the plug on the agreement and send you back to the default tariff.
The meter is a big killer. Even at 6K, selling back at 1.12 you have to sell back a lot just to recover the cost of the meter.
Been saying for years now, selling back, do your sums.
The scale on which homeowners operate, if you spec your system right and use the power properly, you should have very little spare in winter, and lots in summer.
To now sell back only in summer, better one does the sums with the equipment working flat-out during those months too, as a good accountant would.
With the three-year contract, the city does not want to be forced to pay you back “for life” … big projects are coming online which could be cheaper per kWh, a bigger impact, than our “teeny weeny little drops in the buckets”. This is a stop-gap, as I see it.
Yes, 1mil houses feeding back WILL make a difference, but that has another set of complexities. One needs an “intelligent grid”. It is not viable long-term. Dedicated solar/win farms are so much easier, cost-effective, and one point of control.
My 2 cents.
In other news …
The part of interest:
I think there is a way to style that a little differently. I mean, in the same way you convince yourself that this new car you want to buy really is a good deal… 
In many systems, you need some sort of external device (which costs extra) to implement grid limiting. Sometimes this is just an extra CT costing R500, sometimes it is an energy meter costing R4000 or more (if you have a three phase supply). If there are PV inverters involved, and they are somewhat distributed over the property, there is the additional cost of communication infrastructure at times.
The R6000 you are paying for that bi-directional meter might not be a significant premium in a brand new installation.
Sometimes I think of just getting the meter, simply to make my life simpler! Because every once in a blue moon my one PV inverter decides limiting is not something it wants to do today. It did it once while I was on holiday, all I could do was look on from afar as I was paying to provide CoCT with power
This just hit me … you buy a new car, then you go and want to pay it off faster by renting it out or using it as a UBER business.
The moment you do that, you need to make new sums on the repayment terms of the vehicle, the mileage will shoot up, and you won’t keep it for 10+ years as you originally planned.
Same with feeding back … do the sums on the equipment usage that now runs flat-out as long as it can every day.
Rather get a fit-for-purpose solution, like a Solis grid-tied inverter … bet I would be, once all is said and done, a struggle to make the sums truly viable.
Solar is about the scale of operation, feeding all it can back, not our teeny weeny bits and bobs we can feed when we have spare.
I don’t think there is one case here. Certainly the situation in COJ is very different from COCT (or they haven’t disclosed everything, which is entirely possible).
COCT currently have a waiver on the requirement that you be a net purchaser. (something all those singing up should note, that exemption has a date limit on it). In COJ there we have to be net purchasers. Now on a bad month I might buy 60kWh from the grid. Most months it is more like 20. So I can get paid for 19.something kWh. The whole point of going solar is to not rely on the grid and not draw from it.
Now (1) might be OK, even if I can only get a credit of 20 * 0.87 = 17.40 and then add VAT. Well that’s better than a kick in the pants. But the meter (installed at your cost) is 10K, so that’s a lot of power I have to generate before I’m back in the black.
Now if you were on pre-paid before you converted to solar (and I was) and now you are curious about reselling, here’s the bad news: You need to switch to the resellers tariff. See above, already you can only get maybe 20 bucks a month back. But the resellers tariff has about R800 a month (plus VAT) in flat fees. So you are a grand a month down, and another 10k on the meter, before you start making that 20 bucks back.
(3) doesn’t apply to everybody. If you are on the City’s default package you are already paying those flat fees, but you still run into (1) and (2).
So I agree that we should do the analysis. That’s what I did when I switched to pre-paid. I didn’t see how I couldn’t win (and I did). Now when I look at reselling I can’t see how I can’t lose.
I’m busy with SSEG registration (more on that later today hopefully) and eventually the City is going to stop politely suggesting to people that they go off of prepaid and they will force the issue. And when they do that I will bow to the inevitable (and to die wet van die Transvaal), but right now I’ve done the sums and there’s no win for me, there’s not even a break-even. I am concerned about my footprint, but I’ve already massively reduced that by reducing my grid usage to a fraction. I don’t want to be penalised for doing a nice thing. I really would give away my excess production, but I don’t want to pay R1000 a month plus pay for a new meter to give stuff away.
We do ourselves a disservice by not doing the sums first. At the very least we spare ourselves some surprises.
Ja. My system does cost me a little this way, because despite being set to not export it does. A tiny amount each day. And at the end of the month there’s a little gap between the usage my meter shows and the reduction in my pre-paid credit. But it’s a couple of bucks, so I take that and don’t moan about it, because City Power’s solution - switching to the resellers tariff - is going to cost me a lot more than a couple of bucks.
I think registering the generation capacity is limited ( typically to 3.6kW, I understand). Which immediately knobbles the ability to have any meaningful surplus to sell back.
Now if the COCT was to make some concession as to installed capacity along with that 6 K meter they may have a few takers.
I forgot about that!
This is better than we have in COJ (and, I’d bet, most other municipalities). Here I am restricted by the net-consumer requirement. Since I have solar, I don’t buy much from the grid, and I can only sell back (or get paid for) a slightly smaller amount. So see my arithmetic above - I stand to get a credit of about R20 a month, after I’ve had to shell out for the dual-direction meter.
So I get that there’s a limit here, but it’s a far more generous limit than just having to be a net-consumer.
To me a turn off is that there are so many rules. It’s worse than Rugby!
from what I understand, CoCT has dropped the net consumer clause
My understanding is that they came to an agreement with Nersa that that requirement can be waived for two years.
This makes sense to me. They are trying to woo IPPs to supply into the municipal grid. The IPPs are not going to see that much business for them if every Geordin, John and Helen can sell back into the grid. But it’ll take time to get those guys on line, so in the meantime the City takes all they can get from rooftop systems.
Also they have Steenbras, so they have somewhere to store all that electricity.
That all said, the deal in COCT is better than you will get anywhere else.
This makes super sense … the 3 years and whatnot alles … to buy time for the IPP’s to come online.
The fact that it appears CoCT will supply and install the new meter, if that is the case, it makes a lot more sense then.
My ONLY reservations then:
Yes, but apparently not the max 3.5kW feed-in limit.
I find this probably fine given my MPII 5kw is only really going to give me 4000w grid feed capacity…
I also don’t want to run it “flat out” feeding in anyway… I need to look at other options that take the pressure off the MPII.
Same for charging an EV. The inverter has to do the extra heavy lifting and a direct PV to EV (DC/AC) would be the best which the Victron architecture doesn’t do (I think from my research)?
The issue is, not what we think, we can do … the problem is the person interpreting the 3.5kW max.
Let’s see what comes out of the woodwork, into the meter costs, the limit, the 3 years…
For EV charging, using consumer grade stuff, a PV-inverter that feeds the AC directly is going to be the most efficient option, rather than DC-coupled PV from a Multiplus.
The newer Multi-RS is also an HF architecture with the PV boosted directly to grid, so will have similar efficiency benefits.
There are however companies looking at “fast DC chargers” that will run directly from solar PV, probably using the grid as a backup. Apparently all you need is 400V to 1000VDC and the right equipment to communicate with the battery and charge it directly to the battery. This would be the most efficient.
Of course, here there is room for a bad charger to ruin a battery. The onboard AC charger in the car is not there to protect you.
… to much to quote.
That limit is there to ensure stability, so there’s little chance of them lifting it. You’ll find the same kinds of limits in EU as well. (IIRC, in some cases it’s 4.6kVA, the same as for 80A here)
Here you go:
How to apply to get Cash for Power
Applications are now open to existing residential solar PV customers until Friday, 8 March 2024 to take advantage of the Cash for Power Programme.
Existing solar PV customers wishing to only offset their electricity and rates accounts do not need to apply and will automatically be compensated on authorisation of their grid-tied feed-in SSEG system. For customers interested in going beyond this, you can register and get cash for your power – where any remaining credit will accumulate until it reaches a certain amount and then the City will pay you out.
Cash for Power applications are open to all residential solar PV customers on the home user tariff with an approved grid-tied SSEG system and bi-directional AMI meter to feed power back into the grid. Interested parties are required to register as a service provider on both the City Supplier Database and the National Treasury Web Based Central Supplier Database (CSD).
Submit your Cash for Power application to hoosain.essop@capetown.gov.za by Friday, 8 March 2024. Submissions received after this date will be held over for the next round of applications.