Cape Town slashing home solar approval times with new online portal

The City of Cape Town (CoCT) has launched an online portal to simplify and speed up solar installation applications by households and businesses.

CoCT mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis launched the new online Energy Services Applications platform at an event hosted by GreenCape on Wednesday, 13 March.

The city expects that the portal will make solar PV system authorisation easier and dramatically bring down timeframes for their approval.

“We pledged to remove obstacles to solar power investment, and to make more of our services digitally available,” Hill-Lewis said.

“With the city’s new online Energy Services Applications platform, you can apply, track your status, and get approval in a shorter timeframe.”

The portal can be accessed under the Energy Services section of CoCT’s e-Services website.

“If you are an installer, a property owner or a service provider involved in solar PV installations, your first step is to register on e-Services and activate the ‘Energy Services’ tile in order for you to access Energy Service Applications,” CoCT explained.

“You can then apply to authorise your solar PV system via the easy-to-use online portal.”

Geordin Hill-Lewis, Mayor of the City of Cape Town

Hill-Lewis said that incentivising widespread uptake of safe, grid-tied solar PV was a key part of Cape Town’s plans to lessen Eskom reliance and end load-shedding over time.

To date, the CoCT has authorised over 5,000 private solar PV systems have been authorised to date with a combined capacity of 126 MVA.

Monthly applications for small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) in Cape Town tripled between 2021 and 2023.

Although there are several municipalities that offer electricity credits for fed-in electricity, Cape Town is the only metro in South Africa that will pay households and businesses cash for selling their excess electricity back to the grid via its Cash for Power programme.

The city maintains that authorising solar PV systems is a safety requirement as inferior systems could cause fires and power outages and can endanger frontline workers maintaining the city’s electrical grid.

However, this approval process previously led to substantial backlogs as solar demand surged due to increasing load-shedding.

“The City has already halved the wait for Permission-to-Install letters by only accepting grid-tied SSEG systems using city-approved inverters, for the safety of our customers, our city teams, private installers and our grid itself,” Hill-Lewis said.

“We have also streamlined the process to get inverters onto our City-approved list, making the verification of applications easier and faster.”

Automated process with metro databases integration

The Energy Services Application portal will automate the issuing of Permission-to-Install letters for certain types of applications, such as small residential solar PV and battery systems, vastly reducing turnaround times.

CoCT MMC for energy, Beverley van Reenen explained the portal was integrated with the metro’s extensive databases to link property information and electrical supply data for the vetted service providers signing off the installation.

“If residents already have a pending application, there is also no need to re-submit,” Van Reenen said.

“The city will automatically upload all existing applications, which will allow us to fast-track those that have not yet been processed,’ said Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Councillor Beverley van Reenen.

Customers with authorised grid-tied SSEG systems automatically earn credits on their electricity and rates accounts when they sell power back to the city.

To earn actual cash in cases where the value of the fed-in electricity exceeds consumed electricity, customers must apply for the Cash for Power programme.

The first window for application closed on 8 March 2024, with dates for the next window to be announced “in due course”, the city said.