The first 50 kwh supposedly is charged at R14.28 which makes us solar users in South Africa more than double that of Bermuda. I have my doubts over the 50kwh as my bill says otherwise. Given it is only 50kwh, but still it is one way of increasing your monthly bill rather quickly when you were unaware of how you are being screwed over. I think this is a bogus 50kwh anyway and it is for the bulk of your usage. This is how the power companies are clawing back lost revenue plus using other questionable methods. Basically with the connection charges and the first 50kwh you are paying what would have been 50% of your bill prior to having solar installed.
What we are seeing is fixed energy prices moving away from the previous consumption model. This raises the concerns of the future and viability of solar through making it unaffordable. You are either off the grid entirely or you are financially screwed and there is no middle ground. I have no regrets because if load shedding happens again which it probably will I have no worries. For now the extra costs I will suck up until we are off the grid for good. Our system is bigger than most other households and it will not take a fortune to complete the job.
Over the last 18 months since we have had our solar installed I have been puzzled by the lack of savings even though our grid usage has dropped considerably by a good 80%. The chances are you would rightly expect to see some savings yet quite the opposite has happened and the monthly utility bill has risen.
I have been trying to query the February March April monthly bills with no luck as most of the Johannesburg billing systems are not functioning correctly. The advice you are given is pay the bill first and fight afterwards for the difference owed. How convenient for them as they are in so much debt they are using any method to boost their coffers.
This creates a vicious cycle: higher prices drive lower consumption, which drives even higher prices.
I stay up to date with any electricity report as in this country you need to be well aware of what is happening especially having solar. Getting screwed over is just part and parcel of the process as they are doing everything in their power to make those with solar go back to what they had before.
When we first had solar installed we were told we needed to have a separate meter so that we could send energy back to the grid. This was then thought as a very bad idea and that we had to go onto monthly billing and those that had prepaid meters plus solar had to be changed. The reason behind this was simple as the monthly fee for the connection for those on prepaid is R230 and those on monthly billing is R1360. This is a difference of R1130 per month which is a way of cutting their losses from your household using less electricity.
Those households on solar are on a totally different post paid tariff plan with much higher fixed charges than those on prepaid meters. Solar users are being charged as much as R14.28 per kwh which converted into dollars is the equivalent of around $0.90c per kwh which is theft. This apparently is for the first 50Kwh and then drops down, but it is a guaranteed penalty. Compare that to the corporate users who are using bulk electricity packages being charged at R0.62c or roughly $0.04c per kwh. No one is quite sure how many kwh are being charged at R14.28 because my bill it is not just for 50kwh which is implied in the report and could be for many more kwh as then the bill makes more sense.
My overall monthly utility bill is now close to $700 monthly which made no sense and now it does with the bulk of this being charged as electricity , connection fees and two lots of admin charges for who knows what. My utility bill has risen by almost 50% in the last 18 months and I am using less electricity then before. My usage fluctuates between 350 and 500kwh per month yet the bill is not what it should be due to the R14.28 kwh fee for how many kwh I have no idea.
The less you use the more you pay.
The biggest problem is finding how the billing works as there is no explanation and the monthly utility bill makes little or no sense. The above chart shows what the households without solar are being charged and cannot be used as a guide for my property. I would have fallen somewhere within or around the 350Kwh per month bracket which would have been fine for now paying around R1800 monthly and instead paying closer to R8K with connection fees and admin charges so roughly 4x more than a regular household without solar. African madness at it's best and now the rumors are batteries will have a 25% import tariff added to them as clearly they want no one to turn to solar.
I mentioned getting off the grid was a priority not because of the extra costs which I did not understand at the time, but more about the extra costs of having them having your system approved. My system already has the COC approval by a qualified electrician and have never seen the point of spending another R20K for one of their "engineers" to tell me the same thing. It surely is time to get off the grid even though I have other financial matters to be dealing with and is more important than this, but this also cannot wait as every 2 months is the equivalent of one extra battery I could have purchased. I will throw another 3 or 4 batteries at this if I have to guaranteeing getting off the grid or what ever it takes.