This intrigues me. Because you’d think that this is high risk business. But also because the townships have lots of non payment & illegal connections, yet businesses (at present) are paying R149 per day for solar. OK… Maybe this is just shrewd business owners who regard having power as an advantage over the competition.
Very interesting. So I assume they must be using the remote connectivity to turn your solar on/off based on the whether the daily subscription is paid or not?
And this is where the potential risk can come in: we know that Eskom has deployed pre-paid meters that gets bypassed. So if you don’t pay and your system gets turned off for the day, what is stopping you from just bypassing whatever control mechanism is in place?
Unless they went with a fully integrated system and if you don’t pay electricity, your point of sale system stops working too (and your internet connectivity). As you said, business people who realise that focusing on the business and paying R150 a day to run it smoothly is better than getting “free” electricity but having the hassle of keeping it alive, getting other POS etc.
I would assume this is done within the inverter. So it’s more complex than bypassing a meter.
If I were running a rental operation, the inverter would go into some sort of error mode if the casing were opened.
The web site suggests it’s a monthly payment. Possibly the reporter divided the monthly sub by 30 to get a per day figure.
The offering is scaleable, so R149 per day (or R4500) is the minimum sub.
There is money to be made in the townships. The fibre operators have been moving in too.