Tax breaks for rooftop solar in South Africa come with a big catch

Pegasus said:
Please tell me at least you can understand why the solar panels have the incentive and not the rest of the equipment?
Click to expand...
Just like incentivising the taxi industry with just a gearbox. Makes perfect sense.
 
porchrat said:
This... why just the panels?

The entire install is necessary to make this useful in terms of taking load off the grid. That means the inverter and the batteries too. By all means make it a caveat that the install has to include solar panels to qualify. Quite happy with that.

No VAT, no import duties, AND massive tax rebates. Then we're talking. This is pathetic.
Click to expand...
You must be pragmatic, let someone eat a little. :rolleyes:
 
ghaye said:
Just like incentivising the taxi industry with just a gearbox. Makes perfect sense.
Click to expand...
It's not hard bud, really.

The rebate is only available for solar PV panels, and not inverters or batteries, to focus on the promotion of additional generation.
Click to expand...
 
If it wasn't for the fact I already saved more than 15k by being an early adopter I would have been miffed.

But I guess I'll do that upgrade this year after all...probably with the tax money I get back from SARS.
 
Pegasus said:
What do you disagree with?
Click to expand...

We've been talking about this for ages now, are you not reading my posts and just blindly arguing for the sake of it?

But just to clarify for those still talking at the back, this "incentive" is useless on it's own and will not help or incentivise anywhere near enough people to make a dent in the requirements. It is only for people who can already afford a decent sized system or for those lucky enough to have a system already and they can expand a little.

It's not hard bud, really.
 
Harmonic said:
I think the general consensus is the incentive is too little. Batteries and inverters should qualify in combination with new PV.

If you just buy a battery and inverter then no rebate. I think that's a much better solution.
Click to expand...
The general consensus will always be that any tax incentive is too little. The question is given the allocated budget, what will yield the highest result (increased generation/decreased grid usage).

I'm pretty sure the guys at treasury ran multiple models and determined this would give them most bang for buck.

I get why some guys here would disagree, but their absolute insistence that everyone else is obviously wrong is misguided.
 
At current energy prices even if we're stuck stage 3 load shedding it makes more financial sense to get a loan and get a system that has the capability to go fully of grid than to run your pretrol generator for average of one session of load shedding per day.
 
Speedster said:
The general consensus will always be that any tax incentive is too little. The question is given the allocated budget, what will yield the highest result (increased generation/decreased grid usage).

I'm pretty sure the guys at treasury ran multiple models and decided this would give them most bang for buck.

I get why some guys here would disagree, but their absolute insistence that everyone else is obviously wrong is misguided.
Click to expand...

R60k worth of panels would need how much else spend on other equipment to operate? That's over 9kWp according to the clever people who did the calculations.
 
Speedster said:
The general consensus will always be that any tax incentive is too little. The question is given the allocated budget, what will yield the highest result (increased generation/decreased grid usage).
Click to expand...
Cool, let all the people install panels without inverters. Problem solved, grid pressure relieved -- That's your logic and treasuries that is.
 
Spizz said:
We've been talking about this for ages now, are you not reading my posts and just blindly arguing for the sake of it?

But just to clarify for those still talking at the back, this "incentive" is useless on it's own and will not help or incentivise anywhere near enough people to make a dent in the requirements. It is only for people who can already afford a decent sized system or for those lucky enough to have a system already and they can expand a little.

It's not hard bud, really.
Click to expand...
You do at least understand why the solar panels get the incentive and not the rest right?


As for whether the incentive is good enough, it is not the only thing being done to alleviate the loadshedding crises.
It is just something to help. You do understand that right? I'd also love free solar panels.

I mean I am sure you are aware by now that there are other things happening right? Like City of cape town paying people for electricity fed back to the grid. And new private business generating electricity etc. You know that right?
 
semaphore said:
Cool, let all the people install panels without inverters. Problem solved, grid pressure relieved -- That's your logic and treasuries that is.
Click to expand...
Who suggested installing panels with no inverter? That sounds like something only you have suggested so far
 
ghaye said:
There's no price gouging, it's due to the exchange rate. Thank the wonderful economic policies that our "government" has in place for that.
Click to expand...
No, there is price gouging. The increases are well beyond the change in the exchange rate. The same thing happened with solar water heating.
 
Speedster said:
The general consensus will always be that any tax incentive is too little. The question is given the allocated budget, what will yield the highest result (increased generation/decreased grid usage).

I'm pretty sure the guys at treasury ran multiple models and determined this would give them most bang for buck.

I get why some guys here would disagree, but their absolute insistence that everyone else is obviously wrong is misguided.
Click to expand...

I think you're missing the boat here.

National Treasury would have run multiple models, yes, but one of the criteria for those models would have been a political instruction to come up with a model that appears to do some good, but in effect limits the fiscus's exposure to people actually trying to go more "renewable" in their own energy mix.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X