granted, the more people go solar etc - not UPS! - theoretically at least loadshedding
should decrease. according to this document our municipal payback in Saldanha is 73cent per kilowatt, so i get in touch with the guys - that is limited to 25% of your connection per day.
we have a 40Amp connection, at [max] 240V that boils down to 9.6kW, divided by 4 equals 2.4, i.e. max payment per cloudless day would be .73X2.4=R1.75… per month that will max to just over R52… not worth it… thats seems absolutely ludicrous - where did i slip up here?
There are various tariffs across the country, most of them unattractive.
Durban, for example, has quite an attractive tariff BUT you must pay a monthly levy of about R125 per rated kva of your inverter. 5kWh inverter: R625 ish a month (probs a bit more because they are charging by the kva and so the power factor comes into play). So if you have a 5kW inverter, you have to feed in about 480kWh before you just break even. That’s 16kWh a day. That’s more than I use.
My suspicion: The Municipalities (apart from CT) don’t really want the bother of dealing with lots of householders who will only generate a few kWh per day on a sunny day (or must have a significantly over spec system).
So they tell you that OF COURSE you can feed in, AND get paid for it. But then they set up the tariffs so that you’d have to be stupid to do it.
Here in COJ I can’t see how it makes sense at all. Possibly it is different for businesses as they can write off their inverters, panels etc against tax, and still get a credit on their municipal bill.
I’ll add that I draw very little electricity from the grid. Almost nothing during the two peaks in the evening and morning. So I don’t feel guilty that I am disinclined to feed-in, and I hope you don’t. We are least reducing demand. Everybody with PV is. Add up all those individual reductions and even if we don’t sell back, we still make a difference.
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