I think most people know that your Domicilium Executandi is the address where legal notices should be served 
Slightly less, but probably not zero, know that Domicilium essentially means āhouseā. Also from ādomusā meaning āhomeā, and the same place we get things like ādormitoryā and ādomesticā.
You can talk about your house as your domicile, in Afrikaans domisilie, but itās a bit ancient, or as my kids would say, a little bit boomer
Legal debaters said same.
So I asked, does āmostā include most people in SA?
What about people, the majority, living in say areas like say i.e. Guguletu?
And squatter camps?
Your maid/gardener?
Guy filling your tank, washing your windscreen ā¦ ?
Ones 18yo child.
Ones wife, cousins ā¦
Quickly one sees āmostā is a generalization.
Ps. I did the āexperimentā.
As I said, I did it for fun ā¦ but the point stands, legalize is not for the poor, the uneducated, the untrained.
It is a specialized field that says: Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
I have a problem with that if the law is not for the common reader to grasp.
I would think anyone who signed a contract, saw that text there, then asked āwhat on earth is this?ā and got the reply ājust write your address there!āā¦ knows what it is.
Thenā¦ I found out last year Iām neurodiverse. I donāt see the world the way āmostā people do. Soā¦ what the heck do I know
Well, there may be levels of ignorance here. By law, estate agents, insurance salespersons, people at shops helping you open a lay-by agreement, are required to explain every page of what you are about to sign.
My financial adviser always starts at page one and I tell him weāve done all this before, and if I didnāt trust him Iād have taken my business elsewhere. He says āthanks, but I HAVE to explain this stuff to you each and every time. You have to go into this with your eyes open.ā
Similarly when I bought the house I currently live in, the agent started walking me through all the documents and I said to him āthis is the third time Iām doing this now. I know youāre being diligent, but I know the broad strokes so can we just save everybodyās time?ā
Again: āIām not doing my job properly, Iām not being fair to you or to the seller if I donāt explain to you all of what is youāre about to sign.ā
When you open a lay by agreement, the store is supposed to first show you a schedule of how much you must pay for how many months. Before you sign.
But how many people are there who donāt know these things, dealing with people who donāt care that you donāt know and are keen to get the deal signed AQAP?
We rely hugely on trust that others know what they should do and then do it.
Iāll try to deal with the what and the how much. Please understand that I live in Johannesburg, so Iām a City Power customer and my system is registered with them.
I have posted at length about my experiences elsewhere on this forum but
Back to my first point. Unless you are suitably qualified or have a mate who is, at some point you are going to have involve an engineer, and they are going to want paying.
I didnāt have to pay the City anything for registration, and it is my understanding that you donāt pay Eskom for registration.
You must register with whoever you buy your electricity from, not necessarily with Eskom.
In my case I took up an offer that my installer had negotiated for all of his clients. For 5 grand, a company named Pure Energy Solutions would do everything for you. I signed a document appointing Pure Energy as my proxy for the purposes of SSEG registration. They made an initial inspection then I signed that document and they took over. When my signature was required, they emailed the document to me, and I signed and sent it back. They took care of the whole process, so I didnāt have to stand in any queues.
In the case of COJ, they will send an engineer out to check your system. The installer or a representative he appoints must be present. They will not check everything that is declared, but they will pick a couple of things and say āplease show me thisā. They did check that my system didnāt feed back when the grid went down, and they did another test to see how long it took to reconnect when the grid was restored. AIUI this must be at least one minute and no more than 10. This is to avoid an overload when all these systems connect immediately and start demanding power.
Pure Energy inspected my system. They didnāt change it in anyway. When they found shortcomings they told me about me about them. The only one they did find was the aforementioned lack of labelling.
So if your system has been installed by somebody who cut corners or didnāt really know what he was doing, it might cost you quite a bit more.
I didnāt have to change tariff. There is vague wording about this on the letter that I got from COJ, but a reasonable reading of it is that they will switch me over to the appropriate tariff. Nothing has changed. I had to declare at application time if I wished to resell. I donāt, but if I did I would have had to switch tariffs. Different utilities may handle this differently.
Good afternoon.
I require advice on whether i need to register my solar system. My electricity supplier is Ethewini municipality and my system has a CoC. I installed a 5kw solar system as a stand alone system to power some critical loads at home such as the fridge and some lights. This system is not connected to the grid, has its own db board which is seperate from the home db board, and they are not linked. I have installed separate wiring and plugpoints for these critical appliances so that i can manually decide whether to run them on the eskom power socket or my solar power socket.
Is my understanding correct that I only need to register my solar system if I am connecting it to the Eskom grid. In my case, I am not as a stand alone solar system powers a portion of my house while the rest of the house is powered using eskom power.
Sincere apologies for my long question
Thank you
As per a document circulated today, if you are registering with COJ
Uhā¦ what is āexceeding 350kVAā. Is that per day? Instantaneous?
Probably peak power capacity. So instantaneous.
OKā¦ So my Goodwe is not going to manage that
This seems like the news I wanted to hear:-) how long ago did you register? Care to share the process?
I registered with City Power in March 2024. I used a company Pure Energy Consulting, they took care of all the paperwork, prepared the drawings, did the sign off etc.
More details at
My estate is in Stellenbosch Municipality but our power is Eskom direct. Everyone in the estate is on prepaid meters and most people have solar backup systems as Eskom power is very unreliable with prolonged outages.
Will we all be forced to register and take up the HomeFlex packages? What are the rates compared to prepaid? Fixed cost and price/kWh? Currently I only generate about 10kWh/day from my 8 panels, not feeding anything back to the grid. In my calculations it would very likely be cheaper to remove all my solar altogether and buy that 10kWh from Eskom and only have a pure backup system? My solar is 3.2kW and I have roof space limitations so I could only generate 15-20kWh on a good day even if I could use it.
Assuming one could feed back to Eskom, can anyone do a back-of-the-envelope ābreak-evenā calculation on approximately the size of the solar generation capacity required to make registration and switching to the new cost structure worth doing at all?
Thought I post this here - so Eskom has no legal foot to stand on it seems?
I canāt believe this. We connect a system that can generate electricity to our houseās wiring, and thus (potentially) to the grid. At that point the electricity provider has a legitimate interest. You have to match their voltage, their phase and frequency, their technical and safety standards.
If you have no connection to the grid then they have no such interest.
There may be debates to be had about changing you to another tariff, but even then I wonder. You have a system that can feed power back into the grid? Well thatās got to effect your meter and thus your billing. OK, maybe theyāre pushing it too far to insist on a TOU tariff. IDK.
I hope anybody who decides to not play ball here looks beyond anything I post or that they hear via social media and goes and does some investigation and gets themselves properly informed.
When City Power started talking about registration, I asked the lawyer in my family. He said that heād checked the by-laws and that City Power didnāt have a leg to stand on and if they came after him they could see him in court (which he can afford, since he works for a top legal firm).
Very nice, but he was wrong. The by-laws and regulations have been there for several years. And even if they werenāt, well by-laws change all the time - thatās why we have councillors who sit in council and debate stuff.
have a look at the bottom of the Eskom page for some excel base calculators to compare costs on various tariffs (āsmall power userā should be the correct one).
HomeFlex for SSEG appears mandatory and also make the sums a bit more complicated on a per individual use case basis since these are TOU tariffs. Keep in mind, even if exporting the fixed costs remain unaffected (can only off-set the actual energy component).
Okay, so it seems my bill will go up by about 50% during winter months, assuming I donāt use any peak hour electricity (doable). The good news is that I will make back a fair portion of that by exporting during standard rate hours.
Not as bad as I feared, although I will need to upgrade my battery and inverter too as Iāll need to go to 48V. Looking at how Multiplus prices have fallen it seems like a no-brainer to go for a 48/5000 and keeping my PV on the Solis.
I think the Engineer sign-off requirement and fines for non-registration could be debated but the registration rquirement not so much. According to afriforum
AfriForum argues that if there is no legislation, regulations or guidelines specifically authorising Eskom to enforce the registration of SSEG systems, Eskomās intentions to proceed with the process would be unlawful. According to AfriForum, the legislation requiring the registration of SSEG systems only applies to consumers generating more than 100kW.
They seem to be referring to Schedule 2 of the ERA, where under the heading āActivities exempt from licensing and registrationā paragraph 2.4 states:
The operation of a Facility with a capacity of no more than 100 kilowatts which complies with the Code and has a Point of Connection, the Distributor has prescribed the conditions relating to the continued use of the Point of connection; and the Regulator has prescribed the manner in which the Distributor shall keep a register of each Facility.
* emphasis my own
So, even though plants smaller than 100kW do not need
a) NERSA licence
b) Direct registration with NERSA
the Distributor (Eskom in this case) can still make rules about staying connected to the network, and must keep a register of those generators connected to the network.
The NERSA āNet-Billing rulesā also for instance specifies:
4.2 The Distributor may not allow a Prosumer connection to the distribution power system without:
(a) applying to the Distributor detailing:
(i) the description of the applicant;
(ii) the proposed installed capacity;
(iii) the description of the proposed generation technology;
(iv) the continued ability to comply with all applicable legislation;
(v) where applicable, the duration of the connection;
(vi) information relating to the embedded generation facility plant data, location and capacity and standby characteristics; and
(vii) any other requirements specified by the Distributor.
and
11.1 The Distributor shall establish and maintain a register of Prosumers, in which the following shall be recorded-
(a) The name, address and GIS location of every Prosumer
(b) The generation technology, rated capacity and storage capacity (if included)
(c) The date of approval to generate
(d) Estimated annual generation per Prosumer;
(e) Estimated annual export per Prosumer;
(f) Total estimated annual amount of kWh produced by Prosumers.
(g) Total amount of kWh exported by Prosumers.11.2 The Distributor shall ensure that the register is continuously updated and submitted bi-annually to NERSA.
@karischoonbee Another thing to check on is how much you may export. Here in Johannesburg you can only export (or only get credited for) as much as you buy from the grid in the first place. I usually use about 1.25 kWh of grid power a day. So I can get credit for about 38 kWh a month. At about a R1.00 per kWh (factoring in VAT) itās just not worth my while to export.
Bobsterās theory #111209: The utilities donāt want us to feed back, but they also donāt want the bad PR of saying that out loud. They solve this problem with tariff structures that mean you may export, but youād be stupid to.