{"id":651162,"date":"2026-06-06T08:19:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T06:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=651162"},"modified":"2026-06-06T08:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T06:26:09","slug":"south-africans-can-say-goodbye-to-eskom-for-less-than-ever-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/651162-south-africans-can-say-goodbye-to-eskom-for-less-than-ever-before.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africans can say goodbye to Eskom for less than ever before"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South African households can go off-grid much more cheaply by focusing on reducing their electricity demand for heating, cooling, and cooking rather than increasing the size of their solar power system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom and several municipalities have drastically increased fixed electricity charges in recent years, making energy substantially more expensive for homes that only make sparing use of the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That includes many homes with solar power. Before the radical increases in fixed costs, installers like Alumo Energy typically designed systems that met 80% to 90% of a household’s demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They assumed the grid would step in to cover the remaining 10% to 20% during prolonged rain, intense winter cold snaps, or when people accidentally ran power-intensive appliances simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The substantial increases in fixed capacity fees have altered the formulas for achieving an optimal balance between self-generation and grid usage to keep total energy costs as low as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many households that have already invested in solar power, the best option from a cost perspective might be to go fully off-grid to cut their utility connection and avoid fixed charges entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, going fully off-grid will require more than another 10% to 20% of panel or battery capacity to account for the lack of utility power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photovoltaic solar panels can drop to well below 10% of their ideal production potential on days with thick cloud cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many households, increasing the array’s capacity 10-fold is not possible due to space constraints. With such a large number of solar panels, inverter limits are also a major factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, installers use a combination of panel and battery oversizing to maximise system running days. The cost of that system is about double to triple that of an 80% to 90% self-sufficient system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alumo Energy provided example quotes showing how much households with four levels of energy consumption from 450kWh to 1,200kWh will pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The costs ranged from roughly R175,000 to R317,000, although Alumo stressed that component prices and ideal system configurations could vary greatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fix the demand, not the supply <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Gas geysers are a popular option for water heating in South Africa, especially for off-grid properties far away from electrical grid infrastructure. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A cheaper option could be to plug the shortfall in generation and stored energy with a fuel-powered generator. However, this is not allowed by many homeowners’ associations and body corporates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way to minimise the cost of an off-grid system is to make the home more energy-efficient, which can reduce the required size of the inverter, panels, and batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alumo Energy told MyBroadband that standard resistive element geysers were solar “killers,” as they could consume up to 40% of a household’s electricity demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To take this impact out of the equation completely, households can switch to a gas-powered geyser to provide hot water on demand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second option is to install a geyser timer to turn on water heating at a time when the batteries are fully charged, so the solar panels can provide the energy needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Geyser controllers can switch geysers on or off for a specific amount of time and keep them at specified temperatures,” Alumo Energy explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You can program the geyser to switch on between 10:00 and 15:00, set your desired temperature so that when you are back home in the evening, you have hot water ready,” Alumo Energy said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some switches also support Wi-Fi connectivity, so that users can remotely control appliances to switch on during the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alumo Energy recommended CBI’s smart Wi-Fi timers as its experience in the market had shown these to be of a high quality, while offering great value for money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company also pointed out that electric stoves and ovens were energy gluttons, especially in terms of instantaneous power consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“An electric oven or stove draws massive spikes of power that force you into buying larger, more
expensive inverters,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alumo Energy proposed gas hobs and stoves as an alternative. Many households have also turned to more energy-efficient cooking appliances \u2014 such as air fryers \u2014 to reduce their energy use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homes with old air conditioners should also consider replacing them with more modern inverter-integrated models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These can reduce electricity consumption by as much as 50% with dynamic power draw rather than stop-start systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also feature “soft start” technology that prevents significant voltage drops that could trip off-grid inverters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, Alumo recommended that homes with pool pumps put them on timers to run exclusively during the mid-day hours \u2014 typically 10:00 to 15:00 \u2014 when solar production is optimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This ensures it runs entirely on ‘free’ live solar generation when your batteries are already full, rather than draining your battery bank at night.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These are the appliances South Africans should focus on to reduce their electricity usage so they can meet all their own demand with the most cost-effective system possible. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":642260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[77352,28392,181,28853,105650,105649,85151,96726,105648,10426,4922],"class_list":["post-651162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-alumo-energy","tag-electricity-prices","tag-eskom","tag-gas","tag-gas-cooking","tag-gas-geysers","tag-geysers","tag-off-grid-power","tag-self-generation-2","tag-solar-panels","tag-solar-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651162"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651502,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651162\/revisions\/651502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}