Our energy team is working hard on implementing the new cash for power initiative, announced by Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. At the moment, we are focusing on commercial customers, but residential customers will be included in the programme later in 2023.
Commercial customers:
Available now, in addition to the existing credit offset against monthly account
An additional Advanced Metering Infrastructure administration fee may also apply. The cost will be quoted as part of the authorisation process, where applicable.
Credit roll-out is immediate. We will measure the amount of energy fed into our grid. The credit will reflect on the monthly municipal account.
Commercial customers will be credited with 73,87c p/kWh (2022/23) plus 25c p/kWh incentive for each kWh fed into the City grid. There is also a little used commercial tariff of 60,91c p/kWh for those wishing to account for the green account.
Credit offset against monthly electricity account.
If credit remains after the offset, we will pay this. Payments will only be made on amounts over R5 000, and on a monthly basis. Amounts less than R5 000 will be held back until the total exceeds R5 000, and will then be paid.
How much can be sold by a commercial customer? The amount of energy you can produce is limited by the size of your system, which is limited by the size of your connection to our grid.
Residential customers:
Available later in 2023, in addition to the existing credit offset against monthly account.
Installers must apply to us to authorise the system for grid connection. Find out more.
We do not charge an authorisation fee.
Authorised customers need to install a specialised Advanced Metering Infrastructure meter - cost is approximately R12 850. (We are investigating how to lower the costs for households).
A monthly Advance Metering Infrastructure administration fee will apply.
If you are not on the Home User tariff, you will be moved to it. There is no new cash for power levy.
Credit roll-out later in 2023. We will measure the amount of energy fed into our grid. The credit will be reflected on the monthly municipal account.
Residential customers will be credited with 78,98c p/kWh (2022/23) plus 25c p/kWh incentive for each kWh fed into the City grid.
Credit offset against total monthly municipal account, and all accounts linked to the same business partner number.
If some credit remains after the offset, we will pay this to the customer.
Payments will only be made on amounts over R1 000. Amounts less than
R1 000 will be held back until the total exceeds R1 000, and will then be paid once per year.
How much can be sold by a residential customer? The amount of energy that you can produce is limited by the size of your system, which is limited by the size of your connection to our grid.
Now one needs to do the sums, the equipmentās earlier replacement, to be factored in.
Maybe Iām over cautious, missing somethingā¦ as I said, I am happy to be corrected, read, and learn something new.
EDIT: We must also remember, these new āofferingsā from CoCT to pay us for our spare power, may only be for a few years. Sorting the grid overall is the primary focus. This is a tie-over measure if you want.
Furthermore, the moment politics change, it all can change too.
Depends. Is it a onerous charge? A bit of googling suggests an extra R90 for that. Uuhhhhā¦ too much, sorry. On top of the existing R212 network+admin fee, thatās a little stiff. Iāll pay an extra 10%, Iām not paying an extra 50%.
I think the real benefit will come in to play more for business, industrial or farming customer that can scale.
But the real benefit is when you have more than one site. With this you can install PV on one site with a bidirectional meter and then supply power to offset your use on all other sites.
Us homies will never be the real focus as it will be small bits.
Then again you could go big and do this as a small pension. hmmmā¦ If this thing does not have batteries it could potentially work.
You will still pay R3+ per kWh that you pull from the grid, and they will pay you about R1 per kWh that you push back. So you need to sell three times as much as you buy just to break even. Now if they were to offer nett metering the picture would look better, but I donāt think that is on the cards.
The more I look at this thing the more I realise what a terrible deal it is.
I have a Contact in Europe that in the last year managed to have a bill of -50 Euro (they had to pay him 50 Euro). I will ask him what their numbers look like.
Yes, it is a terrible deal. They are trying to market the crap out of it, but at the end of the day they arenāt coming to the table with a deal that reflects the necessary desperation they should have.
We currently do not have enough electricity, even during daylight hours. All they need to do is distribute excess power during the sunny hours of the day between those who can produce and those that donāt. For this ānet meteringā will literally cost them nothing, because I sell and person X buys. The producers canāt produce more than the demand of the grid. As such, I struggle to understand them still trying to āmake moneyā off this āfeed-inā.
Was having this same conversation with my BIL just a few days who lives in Spain, and I quote:
āIn Spain we get paid for surplus power generated back to the grid, so Iām sure that my system doesnāt throttle power production. Howeverā¦
The power producers wonāt rebate you more than you consume (theyāll never allow a situation to develop where they have to pay you). But they take my surplus power regardless ā
I wish they would at least install prepaid meters that donāt charge you for feed-in. That way you could give them power for free without having to fork out for the bidirectional meter and the meter reading fee.
Feeding in a couple of kWh once my batteries are fully charged would not cost me anything, but at the moment I canāt even do that.
I would too. Or maybe they say give us so much kWh and we credit your connection fee each month. A token if you want, cents on the rand for them, and they can sell the āfreeā electricity for a profit, or give it away for free to the needy, as they already do.
This needs some pushback I thinkā¦ my understanding is that CoCT charges around R10k for a meter ( @TheTerribleTriplet please confirm) whilst I enquired from Saldanha Bay Municipality a few weeks back and they gave me a ballpark of R2.5k to R3k.
Given that the tariff structure is known.
If you plugged in, say, your historical December and June production. ( Or the best and worst months of a given year)
Then realistically estimated the headroom that was available to export.
( Bearing in mind that exporting cannot be done during load-shedding).
Then averaged these two months and multiplied by twelve for an annual figure.
Multiply this annual figure by the R1.04 rebate.
That should indicate how many years it would take to break even for the cost of the meter.
But keep in mind that if you donāt feed in, they anyways donāt have any more electricity to sell. So they are making the same amount of money in both scenarios, but in the one where they net meter you, at least we have less loadshedding because more people feed in.
i have a client where a bi-directional meter was installed, he has 10.8 kW of panels, nowadays he is generating about 70-75 kWh per day, consumes around 30 and feeds back around 40 kWh per day, meter cost was R10,770
My biggest problem with the meter is not the cost itself, itās the fact that I never want to go back to being a postpaid clientā¦
In the municipality where I live the meter reading estimates were always overestimated, and actual readings only happened like once a year, so it was a constant battle and I had to scrutinize the muni account every month to make sure there was no funny business.
I am on prepaid now with IBT tariff and I find it just so much more manageable.
So in his case naturally heāll quickly pay off the cost of the meter. However, he installed double the system he needed, so the true cost of him feeding back is the cost of the meter, half his panels, as well as half of his inverter, and half of his installation.
Iād imagine he paid ~R50k for the panels, R25k for the extra inverter size, add sommer R5k for extra installation, and R10k for the meter. As such he needs to pay off R90k, make it R100k, to make it economically feasible. Iām ignoring that he likely had to install additional batteries as well to balance with the larger inverter than he needs.
If someone gifts me a Solis, and a few extra days of time (this is the really hard part, since extra time is pretty much unobtainium and the current implementation of our universe) I could probably have the first version done in a few hours.
Basically, go to the dbus-modbus-client code, look at how ABB meter support is implemented (which took like 3 days all in)ā¦ thatās about what it would take. Maybe this post of mine inspires the LazyWebā¢ to do it.
A PV-inverter is essentially an energy meter. Same interface, uses the āpvinverterā role and supports no others, and it will have /Ac/MaxPower (the nameplate rating) and maybe /Ac/PowerLimit (if it supports limiting) extra on top of that. And a /Position path (indication what AC input/output it is installed on). Thatās it. That code base would make it really really easy for someone to roll their own driver, and is exactly how I would do it.
Plusā¦ you can avoid the RTU->TCP gateway too. Code supports talking directly via RS485, with the usual cable.
If this thing does not have batteries it could potentially work.
: How far is the Victron integration (ala Fronius)?