This needs the be said. Many organisations (big and small) and “news” site are doing exactly this - not being objective and trying to “muddy the water” and get support/clicks to the causes or sites.
It’s becoming a real nightmare to work out exactly what is truth for the man on the street.
I have the converstation regularly. We have just had the yearly proces increase frrom our muni. Many people are surpirsed and enraged by the lack of consultation, etc, etc. BUT NONE read any of the communications from the last year or bothered to attend the workshops organised by the muni and explaining the NERSA/ESKOM prices changes.
Now pitchforks are out and they are going to embarrass themselves again and further jeopardize the opportunities a muni has for saving ESKOM costs by allowing SSEG residents to feed back at a lower rate.
It doesn’t help that the Muni finance guys don’t see the huge opportunity in front of their noses.
It’s the first of many experiments. Can you imagine if it could be state wide… I think that is their thinking…
It is also 100000 homes that are not using Grid feed at the time and if each home offsets another (make that 200000) - the opportunities to reduce PEAK usage are huge.
We have the same issue in SA. Muni gets charged by Eskom on Peak usage and if all SSEG’s could feed back a little during this period (peak) to lower peak demand from Muni > ESKOM then their overall cost structure would be reduced for the whole year. (eg.
These are key parameters in the tariff structure, and exceeding the NMD or MEC can result in additional charges.
If the NMD could be reduced from 5 mw/p to 4.5 mw/p for example a small numi you can imagine the lower tariff a Muni could get from Eskom.
Yeah. I always hate the kneejerk way such civil rights groups get involved with technical stuff.
Another example is the large solar installation at Frankfort, which did not comply with NRS048, but “kampvegters” kept arguing that Eskom was being underhanded by not allowing them to skip load shedding…
You are 100% correct there. The no-nonsense “what counts” at the end of the day. Where the true buck stops.
Now to explain that to the newbie why s[he] has to pay a electrician and a engineer AFTER having explained the “regs tegnies korrekte” (as you did) reasons why the engineer signoff is required, causes a LOT of debates at times. And the media can “jump-on-that-bandwagon-too”.
@Rautenk , you know and I know, me having asked you a couple of times what can be done and what not, the electrician says so, you say nope, regs now says “that”, for “they” interpret their book, or don’t have the latest book, or their boss says it must be so, being the party who signs that CoC right?
Or solar installers say “we’ve done it this way for all our sites, it is the right way” …
On top of that, my recent situation, the gas installer comes past and says, nope, you cannot do that if you want a Gas CoC. The case of the re-routed panel wires crossing the gas line feed. (sorted by the way)
Gas installers also need to focus!
Hence the oversimplistic argument stopper:
For where I sat, all this time, the Engineer is checking that the Installation/Master electrician/Solar installer followed the LATEST rules.
Haha true, I’m so used to thinking of a kilowatt-hour as the lowest unit and forgetting it is already 1000 watts. Cool, so yeah 500MW is a good amount of power. Guess a bit of that power would anyways have been used in the homes (that wouldn’t have bothered the utility anyways), pets say 250MW at most, so you still have another 250MW to help with peak demand.
And therein lies the problem. I have just bought a house with a solar system that I insisted be signed off and registered with the local municipality(George in this case which follows CoCT almost to the letter). This was done in March 2025.
Even my cursory layman’s inspection can tell you it is not compliant, e.g. AC and DC cables in the same trunking, no labels, DC cable in ceiling not in trunking, etc. What do you do now when it is supposedly compliant with all the “professional” signoffs? Report the PR Eng. to ECSA? And then go through the hassle and expense of redoing the whole mess?
Yes, engineers need to take responsibility ECSA is law bound to ensure this. The Dept. of Labour is lax in enforcing the Electrical Installation Regulation, please don’t let the Engineering fraternity follow suit.
(But be nice and inform that ECSA registered professional that the system is not safe or as per regulation, and that he has signed that it does… scare him a bit!)
Same problem as with a regular COC. Some people will be rigorous, others will just sign a piece of paper. Middle ground: The guy doing the COC is not properly accquainted with the latest regulations.
I remember trying to get my house COCed a while back (for my own piece of mind, because I was worried about the wiring). Different electricians were clearly interpreting regulations differently - or working from different versions. They were acting honestly but still gave me different advice. One told me that the wiring in the oldest part of the house is not up to code, but is right for the code that was in force when the house was built and so it’s deemed compliant. He also told me that my PV system can be disregarded because it’s considered an appliance. (!)
More recently (as recorded here) I got my PV system registered. This included the line drawing signed off by an engineer. The drawing clearly shows the two arrays of panels being earthed, but it later emerged that there was no such earth (there is now). So we have the same problems as with the regular COC.
Posted somewhere here the trials and tribulations I had to go through to get a Initial CoC on this house. Never had one, mistake no 1.
I’ll be candid, the BS, the lies, the misinformation spread as fact from 6 out of 7 “experts”, was astounding.
The best ones where:
CoC’s cost between R10k and R40k - got their report (paid for it) and then and when I asked: These line items, can you expand a bit more on them? Vague towards no answers. The misinformation.
Only valid for 6months - the lies, as I’m not selling.
Your 5kva inverter is too small for the house. Cannot give you a CoC until you upgrade it - the BS.
Feel sorry for people these 6 companies go and see … for I would bet my left nut it would be like …
OUTA does not seem to be equally opposed to “anti-poor” engineer sign off requirements by municipalities (I might have missed it though).
If the objection is truly about cost to have a solar system “signed off” then targeting a standardised and capped pricing structure seems a better place to spend energy. What prevents sparkies from charging R10K for a “solar COC”?
That would be deemed anti-competitive. Also I don’t think that OUTA want to be seen to be anti free market. But I do wonder why they think it will force prices lower.
We do have a warmer winter though! That will account for some of it.
How do I know? Well, I’m only on the second bottle of LPG for the space heater, and the first bottle was left over from last year too. Of course that is somewhat of a regional measurement, Western Cape side, but it probably affects large enough areas to lower demand.
or yes, it was actually colder and more cloudy/rainy days in Cape Town