Cape Town’s solar-selling dealbreaker

The City of Cape Town (CoCT) says that additional “metering accommodation” costs for bidirectional meters are “out of its control” and blamed them on “exorbitant” charges by private electrical companies.

Cape Town has been offering its cash-for-power programme over the past few years, allowing consumers to earn back credits for excess electricity generation and be paid back money as small-scale embedded generators (SSEGs).

However, the high prices of the bidirectional or feed-in meters required for customers to sell their excess electricity back to the grid have dampened participation in the programme.

To help address this, the metro launched a new single-phase feed-in meter at R6,043 in May 2024.

Its price is significantly lower than the 3-phase feed-in meters supporting the SSEG programme, which had consistently cost over R10,000 in the past few years.

In its communication to the public, the CoCT said the price included the meter and installation.

However, MyBroadband recently received complaints from several disgruntled Capetonians who said the municipality was not entirely transparent about the full costs involved with selling electricity back to the city’s grid.

They pointed out that the CoCT’s SSEG rules required those wishing to contribute excess solar generation to install “meter accommodation” at their own cost on the boundary of their property.

This includes a new meter box and additional cabling that must be run underground from the box to the customer’s distribution board (DB).

One customer had obtained quotes from electricians ranging between R10,000 and R15,000 to do the necessary work, including running new cabling through his walls and under his pavement to connect with the DB in his garage.

Another received a much higher quote of R30,000, likely because the distance between his home’s perimeter and his DB was greater.

Adding these costs to the R6,043 makes the price reduction over the three-phase meter negligible.

An entry-level or medium-size solar power installation would likely take several years to produce enough excess electricity for the resulting credits or cash to cover the meter and associated costs.

Among the complainants’ questions was why the meters could not be installed in their existing street-facing boxes or nearer to their DBs.

Bigger box with direct access required by bylaws

Radio station Cape Talk subsequently interviewed the city’s executive director of energy, Kadri Nassiep, about the issue.

Nassiep explained that the current boxes were not big enough to accommodate the new bidirectional meters and that the meters needed to be accessible for communication and troubleshooting.

Presenter John Maytham pressed further on this point and asked why the city could not simply request access to the meter from customers, like it would for those installed inside their properties.

“The way our systems work in terms of the bylaw is that everything that is done on the inside of your property is considered to be your responsibility,” Nassiep said.

“Everything that is done on the outside is our responsibility, and the sidewalk itself is the city’s property.”

“That is why it has to be on the edge of that erf, so that it is part of the city’s property and we can access it at any time as required, not just when [the property owner] is home.”

When it came to the high metering costs, Nassiep pointed the finger at the electrical companies charging excessive amounts.

“One must appreciate that some of these costs are out of the control of the city,” Nassiep said.

“The costs that I’ve heard are exorbitant and I really would advise consumers to shop around.”

“I cannot understand why these costs are so high. First of all, the box itself is cheap.”

“The major cost here seems to be labour because the cabling itself would also be reasonably priced.”

“We are doing our part to bring down costs and by reimbursing customers through cash-for-power.”

“We need to do more, but obviously, we also need the contractors to play their part and for consumers to maybe just shop around a bit more.”

MyBroadband recently calculated that the uptake of the new feed-in meter has been slow when compared to bidirectional meter installations in the city in previous years.

However, Nassiep has insisted that the overall uptake has been “tremendous” and that the city’s online automation system had helped bring down the backlog in pending applications for the programme from over 3,000 to around 900.