Problem with the fight against solar power registration in South Africa

Sopbeen said:
R0. You pay R11 per unit and punch the code into their little kak boksie.

If there were a monthly fee, I would cut the service without hesitation. They bring no value to the table.
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So prepaid fixed charges is free then. What eskom plan are you on? If you don't buy for a few months do they come and remove the connection?
 
wingnut771 said:
So prepaid fixed charges is free then. What eskom plan are you on? If you don't buy for a few months do they come and remove the connection?
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We are on the "Landlight 60A". We have not bought/used eskom power for the last 7 months (since the installation was finished)... So it might be a bit early to tell.
 
konfab said:
1) Eskom already has to plan this, and each house already has a fixed current limit. Inverter cannot exceed grid load.
2) Inverters are smart enough to handle that. And that is assuming they are feeding back. Which they won't be in most cases.
3) Eskom should already be handling that. Retards with a suicide plug have been able to do this forever


What Eskom should be doing is making it worth the while for solar users to keep their grid connections. Not milk them at every stage. They could solve their own problems very much by embracing solar users rather than punishing them. Like if they made use of Deye's virtual battery for example. They give you a partial rebate on fixed costs if they can coordinate when your system pushes electricity into the grid.

If you have cheap electricity in the day (solar), and cheap at night(Eskom excess capacity), then that makes everyone happier. And with EVs becoming more popular, they will have a huge opportunity to eat up petrol revenue.
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Eskom still have to know exactly how much solar might be lost or feed into the grid, if you watch the UK power mix you can see this changing in virtually real time - you then understand why they need to spin up gas at short notice to account for solar loss.

If you want a worst case.... Spain April last year, it wasn't directly because of wind or solar, but the energy operator didn't properly plan for the amount of power coming into the grid from those sources.

What I do think is crazy is the mucipalities charging for grid-feedin, seriously, they can pay you something like 50c/kWh and then arbitrage that back in to someone else at R2/kWh or whatever their rate is... that would represent a significant profit over buying the power from Eskom, but no, mucipalities in South Africa arn't that clever...

D
 
damian24 said:
Eskom still have to know exactly how much solar might be lost or feed into the grid, if you watch the UK power mix you can see this changing in virtually real time - you then understand why they need to spin up gas at short notice to account for solar loss.

If you want a worst case.... Spain April last year, it wasn't directly because of wind or solar, but the energy operator didn't properly plan for the amount of power coming into the grid from those sources.

What I do think is crazy is the mucipalities charging for grid-feedin, seriously, they can pay you something like 50c/kWh and then arbitrage that back in to someone else at R2/kWh or whatever their rate is... that would represent a significant profit over buying the power from Eskom, but no, mucipalities in South Africa arn't that clever...

D
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We are not blessed with real time grid monitoring like the uk, but that doesnt mean eskom doesnt have it and they know exactly how much is installed if they crunch the numbers.
 
damian24 said:
Eskom still have to know exactly how much solar might be lost or feed into the grid, if you watch the UK power mix you can see this changing in virtually real time - you then understand why they need to spin up gas at short notice to account for solar loss.

If you want a worst case.... Spain April last year, it wasn't directly because of wind or solar, but the energy operator didn't properly plan for the amount of power coming into the grid from those sources.

What I do think is crazy is the mucipalities charging for grid-feedin, seriously, they can pay you something like 50c/kWh and then arbitrage that back in to someone else at R2/kWh or whatever their rate is... that would represent a significant profit over buying the power from Eskom, but no, mucipalities in South Africa arn't that clever...

D
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In South Africa, most of those installs have batteries, so there won't be that much of an inrush as the sun goes down.
 
wingnut771 said:
We are not blessed with real time grid monitoring like the uk, but that doesnt mean eskom doesnt have it and they know exactly how much is installed if they crunch the numbers.
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One of them could also get off their overpaid derrière and get a weather forecast to estimate what is going to be required and what isn't. They can also use that super secret surveillance tech they've been threatening us with (otherwise known as google earth) and get the bigger picture that way. Beyond that they can go fsck themselves. They created this problem, they can deal with it.
 
quovadis said:
Eskom’s smart meters are G3-PLC grid edge sensors. Realtime or 15 mins reporting.
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Why doesnt eskom do this?

GB Fuel type power generation production

GridWatch | Live statistic of UK National Electricity grid by type of generation | Solar PV power Generation | Coal Stations output in Gigawatts | Wind Output Gigawatts | Nuclear energy output |Biomass power generation Output
gridwatch.co.uk gridwatch.co.uk
 
quovadis said:
The tariff plan they move you to is TOU. So you could in essence dump your EV during peak at R3.66 exported and refill off-peak. Offpeak is R1.91 imported. Vary the times and you can net zero energy use.
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I don't mind moving to TOU, that is fair enough. It is their fixed charges that are absolute theft.
 
I don't think we are anywhere near this in terms of feeding back, but this is what can happen. Especially since our grid is so coal dependent.

www.pv-magazine.com

Sri Lanka asks PV system owners to disconnect after nationwide blackout - pv magazine Global

Sri Lanka has ordered PV system owners to disconnect from the grid following a nationwide blackout on Oct. 17. The outage follows a similar incident in February 2025, when high solar penetration was identified as a major contributing factor.
www.pv-magazine.com www.pv-magazine.com

According to a CEB investigation published in April 2025, the blackout was triggered at noon by a fault at the Panadura grid substation. At the time, solar PV accounted for more than 50% of electricity demand, leaving the grid with insufficient system inertia to withstand the disturbance. The resulting voltage drop and cascading disconnections led to a nationwide blackout.
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Sri Lanka had another nationwide blackout on Saturday, with PV system owners asked to disconnect. We don't really feedback so this isn't really going to be a problem for us. But these are the things Eskom/Authorities etc have to think around.
 
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