We know that … am waiting on the far “left” / “right” to give the “mitigating” points of view. 
don’t know about left/right but if you ask my wife I am mostly wrong.
regarding stages:
as the well-known eskom engineer Willie Skud-n-Spies is rumoured to have said: “a stage by any other name will smell like sweat”…
Stages are what councils need to shed as instructed by eskom.
Whatever your local council energy use is will influence what they need to shed and their actual schedules (COCT schedules are probably more complicated due to the availability/unavailability of COCT’s own generation).
If eskom needs more to be shed and without instructing councils to increase their cut stages to avoid the grid going ffsst they can also request larger contracted users to reduce/shift use etc.
The name of the stage is irrelevant I reckon. If eskom says we are short 6GW while they are short 8GW, tell no one and hope for the best is where the big problem will be.
I saw that over the weekend, and I knew the “they are lying!” crowd would be in full swing. Again, how come we know about it? Because it was actually reported. Nobody is lying. The actual amount of shedding was stage 6. The margins, and the amount they could make up with load-curtailment, meant they got away with it.
Does it therefore mean there is nothing to worry about? Of course not! What it means is that you cannot look ONLY at the load-shedding stage when you make a determination about how bad things are. You need to look at 1) load shedding stage, 2) load curtailment amount, and 3) what was the lowest margin.
Number 3 is the critical one. Screw that one up, and you have a national blackout, or at least large-scale outages.
https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/680865/sars-is-finding-a-new-way-to-get-info-on-taxpayers/
Next they will tax all solar systems.
The one thing I continually ask… is on what basis they will tax solar systems? Pretty much any tax that doesn’t rely on some sort of grid-availability fee, would face impossible legal challenges.
I have no doubt that someone might try. What I doubt is whether they will succeed, and if they do, whether it will happen any time in the next decade.
It would be impossible to tax someone with an off-grid system (ie, no grid connection at all) for example. People with a grid connection are far more easily “taxed” by changing the tariff and charging a connection fee. Or increasing the connection fee if you already have one (which is… most of us).
It is rather interesting how they intend to use this information though: They get a claim-back for solar panels installed from someone who paid too little tax last year… you absolutely should expect that to bite you in the posterior.
There is something very unsettling about SARS’ attitude over money lately. On my 2022 return, I am asking for about 1% back… paid slightly too much. They are still deciding on whether I should get that back… I won’t make that mistake again. Next year, I will make sure I pay 1% too little, and hand that over at the 11th hour.
(Also… BusinessTech… they are maybe one step higher than a common rumour mill…).
Jup … I’ve had some very interesting experiences recently. SARS went back to 2002-3 and 4. Thank snot I came across a box in the garage that I could prove them wrong. If I did not have that would have been out 10’s of thousands with huge fines.
Well, they tax farmers for the capacity that their dams COULD hold in water, regardless whether it rained or not. So do not underestimate the tax man.
What the (fill in any swearword here)!!!
The farmer constructs the dam.
Free water happens to fill it, or not.
… and then he is taxed… Geez!
At least in my case… the panels are already up. When I add more later this year, I don’t plan on claiming it back. Not worth the schlep.
I’d love to see the legislation around that, do you perhaps have a link? (Honest question, I’m curious).
question/loophole though is when you sell the house and the new owner claims “hey SARS, I just installed solar panels, herewith my banking details for my refund”. Having additional info might make keeping track of duplicate/fraudulent claims?
I will overall be way more concerned about local council “tax” to compensate for lost electricity sales due to amongst others increased uptake of solar and increasing energy efficiency from squeezed consumers. Amazing how property valuations have started going up.
from COCT budget 2022/2023:
get the popcorn ready…
Former Eskom group chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter confirmed that he will appear before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) next Wednesday. [ Eskom corruption allegations: De Ruyter confirms appearance before Scopa ]
“He was requested to be physically in Cape Town but I received a request from De Ruyter through his legal representatives to appear virtually, I have acceded to that request.”
Hlengwa did not indicate whether De Ruyter had given reasons for his request.
Committee members will be required to attend in person due to load-shedding and possible connectivity issues. The meeting is scheduled from 9am to 4pm.[ De Ruyter to appear virtually before Scopa next Wednesday ]
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He’d have to fake the invoice and the rest of the paperwork though. Which is tax fraud. Even if I am all nice and keep the invoice, and hand it to the new owner (you know, for warranty purposes), it will have my name on it.
The Americans have an interesting ground rule: No taxation without representation. Of course that has a historical precedent (they were telling the British that paying taxes, but not having a say is rather unfair), but I think the principle remains. If I am taxed on this… what good do I (or the public) get out of it?
I still think that it is far more likely that the “availability fee”, or the connection charge, or whatever it is called, will be adjusted. The inevitable end of this is a cost-reflective tariff where you pay for the connection at the beginning of the month, and then for consumption separately. Larger connections pay more, smaller connections pay less. The overall cost of delivery is shared by all those who use it.
The guy with the solar system then pays for a connection he hardly uses… but that is completely fair, because that’s what it costs. You want that backup, be prepared to pay for it.
Any tax beyond that will almost inevitably end up as a kind of double taxation (the income generated from the household or business that uses that energy is already taxed), or taxation without a clear returned benefit.
The mention of taxes on dams also made me do some research. Still haven’t found the exact text for this, but it seems there are different schedules for water use. The moment you’re using large amounts of water for commercial purposes, creating effluent, damming up rivers, extracting ground water close to a large storage dam or river… then you need a license. For normal water use, including drinking, cleaning, livestock… you don’t need to register anything. In some municipalities a bylaw may require you to register your borehole. Again, there appears to be a principle that taxes and/or registration costs arise when your activities starts to infringe on those of others.
I cannot really see a similar infringement in the case of generating your own electricity. Loss of sales is not an excuse. Selling electricity to me is not some kind of right. Receiving money for the service you provide is.
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Either that OR get a generator. Would bet the connection fee is cheaper than running a generator.
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I noticed a newspaper heading while in a local supermarket. Loyiso Nkohla was gunned down. So who is he? Well, remember Andile Lili, the poo-protestor dumping human excrement at Cape Town International? He’s Andile’s brother from another mother. Or was.
Why? Well, rumour has it it is because he’s trying to get the Philippi railway line opened, and there are powers that doesn’t want that to happen.
If you can get shot for something like that, I can absolutely see why you can get shot for trying to fix power stations.
I don’t blame De Ruyter for a moment.
I just remember this from years ago when my grandfather was upset about it, especially given that there was a draught at the time. His use of “tax” might have meant any money paid to the government.
I’ll check with him/my uncle what the exact reason for this was.
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Working with those numbers. 27GW is available, peak in summer is 32. That means during the evening peak you are 5GW short, so stage 5 to 6 is necessary in summer evenings, but the days can be lower. That more or less matches what we saw.
Winter asks for 35GW, so we’re 8 short, and can rise to 37, which is 10 short. That means stage 8 during the day (maybe 6 or 7 on a good day), and stage 10-11 in the evenings.
In stage 8 you are down 50% of the time, 4 hours on, 4 hours off.
Stage 9 will probably turn one of the outages into 6 hours, so you will get 4/4/4/4/4/6 (that’s 14 hours out of a 26 hour cycle, or 54%).
Stage 10 will probaby be 4/4/4/6/4/6 (16 hours out of a 28 hour total cycle, or 57%).
Stage 11 should be 4/6/4/6/4/6 (18 hours out of a 30 hour cycle, or 60%). I suspect they will fight tooth and nail to avoid this.
However we look at this, this will be a winter of discontent… I hope the guys in the ANC is looking forward to it!
The only thing I can ‘try’ and explain is the hours / differences to the schedule. Well, actually, your friends at Eskom can:
And the folks at Daily Maverick reworded it slightly in their article:
But it comes down to the fact that it’s a schedule designed to be over a four-day period for a certain stage. Each municipality does it differently, but I think there’s a similar rule of thumb that @plonkster also referred to last year at some stage where you can see the change where it ‘shifts’ again. If you’re looking at it as if we’re on a permanent stage 6 it’s a lot easier. When you throw in 11 hours at stage 5 and 13 hours at stage 6 it becomes a little more difficult and you end up with a ‘you win some you lose some’ kind of situation, but overall the municipality is still shedding what they need to shed. That’s before CoCT drops the 5 to 4 and keeps the 6 aaaand I think you know where I’m going.
Anyways, here’s the explainer:
- Stage 1 means that up to 1,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed (ie, switched off) up to three times over a four-day period for two hours at a time, or three times over an eight-day period for four hours at a time.
- Stage 2 means that up to 2,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed up to six times over a four-day period for two hours at a time, or six times over an eight-day period for four hours at a time.
- Stage 3 means that up to 3,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed up to nine times over a four-day period for two hours at a time, or nine times over an eight-day period for four hours at a time.
- Stage 4 means that up to 4,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period for two hours at a time, or 12 times over an eight-day period for four hours at a time.
- Stage 5 means that up to 5,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period: nine times for two hours and three times for four hours.
- Stage 6 means that up to 6,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Customers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period: six times for two hours and six times for four hours.
- Stage 7 means that up to 7,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Consumers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period: three times for two hours and nine times for four hours.
- Stage 8 means that up to 8,000MW needs to be cut from the grid. Consumers can expect to be shed up to 12 times over a four-day period for four hours at a time.
In other news I would love to know how much of that Diesel budget has been used so far this financial year as they ran 10x OCGTs when they posted the peak feedback for the 18th and 9x when they posted for the 14th.
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