South Africans with solar power could pay more for electricity

Done that. Fekkim. Now the useless thieves are nailing me on my rates and taxes. R416 a month.
Got to feed the leaches.
 
We tend to take for granted the HUGE amount of infrastructure that is needed to get electricity to us. To get power from the coal stations in the north of the country to the whole of SA requires huge transmission lines, multiple substations and alot of highly skilled human resources for maintenance, planning and upgrading. If you don't use solar this cost is paid as you use electricity. But the fact is, whether you use the power or not, if there are electrical lines to your home then they cost the same to maintain whether you use them or not. And yes, you can disconnect completely from the grid (even if it is a HUGE mission). But Its very likely that if you did, you would end up paying a lot more for the extra solar and battery infrastructure than for the connection fee. If it rains for a week you need a SIGNIFICANT amount of batteries if you can't pull power from the grid.

Yes, the cost structuring should be fair and those with a lower usage should be subsidised (although their infrastructure costs the same amount), I would propose less subsidies at the higher consumption end: according to these graphs you need to be paying over R2000 a month for power before you are subsidising lower power consumers.

Lastly, a quick FYI to the webmaster: The graphs can't be read properly on a phone, the resolution is not good enough. Looks fine in desktop mode.
 
Most of the infrastructure was paid for years ago.
And yes it cost us about 250k rand to get electricity to our farms in 1980.
And no upgrades have been done since.
Sick and tired of feeding the useless leaches.
 
When I installed solar, it was primarily to negate load shedding and as a bonus to enjoy lower eskom usage. Since then however, and with ever-sky rocketing elctricity costs, it is now my mission to divorce myself as much as possible from eskom pricing and unreliability. My ultimate goal (an upgrade or two down the line) is to be seeing zero eskom usage for the most part. I am willing to pay the current connection fee to ensure that I have a back up should the weather be sunless for days on end. So, ~R300 per month (as it stands now) to be able to use eskom if and when I need it. Seems fair to me.

Should they forge ahead with this nonsense (good luck in GP btw), I'll bulldoze their connection out of the ground and take my chances with a generator.
 
I had a skirmish with the local municipality when they tried to bill me for 3 million liters of water used in a month.
So in their great wisdom they cut my pre paid electricity off when I refused to pay.
They got the middle finger as I was already totally off grid.
Now I'm refusing to pay for anything.
Ineptitude bunch of thieving morons.
 
Lupus said:
Please note this is Eskom themselves, not the muncipalities, a lot of the muncipalities already charge capacity and service fees. So before anyone jumps up and down, it's for Eskom direct customers.
Click to expand...
Thanks Lupus, if this is the case don’t you think the writer (journalist) should have written so right up front, or is this again sensationalism that the media is battling with?
 
Peter Strydom said:
Thanks Lupus, if this is the case don’t you think the writer (journalist) should have written so right up front, or is this again sensationalism that the media is battling with?
Click to expand...
It's exactly that, it's for the clicks, same as Johannesburg is doing load reduction, DSTV lost this X amount and and, it's all to drive views. Headlines in the old days of Newspapers used to do the same thing. Sensastionalist headline, very little to do with actual story.
 
Zuner said:
I have prepaid, wonder if that makes a difference to being cut off when you don't pay.
Click to expand...
with Eskom prepaid So far I have been put on a bad payer list and have been scheduled for auditing (fair as they assume i bypassed the meter since I'm not buying as much as I used to (600 odd Kwh to 100Kwh)
and have had 2 Eskom technicians come to visit me for surprise inspections
lol the Irony is they both politely called first to see if I'm free to see them ;)
 
isie said:
with Eskom prepaid So far I have been put on a bad payer list and have been scheduled for auditing (fair as they assume i bypassed the meter since I'm not buying as much as I used to (600 odd Kwh to 100Kwh)
and have had 2 Eskom technicians come to visit me for surprise inspections
lol the Irony is they both politely called first to see if I'm free to see them ;)
Click to expand...
What does that mean?
 
wingnut771 said:
So the "bad payer list" is completely meaningless.
Click to expand...

Similar happened when I switched to mostly solar during the day, before I bought inverters and more batteries.

5 Eskom people come to do a checkup and they were like "Ohhh, you don't use power in daytime and got a prepaid meter. Why didn't you tell us? We thought you bypassed the meter, stealing power".

Just cannot make this bs up.

They need to go to Soweto and do audits on all of the houses there.
 
wingnut771 said:
What does that mean?
Click to expand...
wingnut771 said:
Yes, and if he wants to buy 10kWh, does he just pay for 10kWh?
Click to expand...
Lupus said:
Well ask Isie, he's on it
Click to expand...
according to the guys that came to audit me you end up on the list if you don't buy a minimum of R300 a month on prepaid tokens. (i think he said it takes about 3 or 4 months) - they then go out to audit you to see if the meter is faulty or if you bypassed.
If bypassed disconnect you and slap you with a R6K fine to reconnect.
 
isie said:
according to the guys that came to audit me you end up on the list if you don't but a minimum of R300 a month on prepaid tokens. (i think he said it takes about 3 or 4 months) - they then go out to audit you to see if the meter is faulty or if you bypassed.
If bypassed disconnect you and slap you with a R6K fine to reconnect.
Click to expand...

They should make it a criminal matter if anybody bypasses electricity meters, which is regarded as theft.

Jail time will make those Tsotsis think twice about stealing electricity maybe.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter