Eskom’s nasty surprise for solar users

Eskom has warned that homeowners and businesses that have installed rooftop solar systems should register them or face penalties, and South Africans could be looking at paying well over R50,000 as a result.

The power utility said the registration process ensures that the solar systems do not compromise the safety and reliability of the national grid.

Energy expert Matthew Cruise told Newzroom Afrika that it is not surprising that many people are now finding out that they need to do this for the first time.

Previously, it wasn’t well publicised from Eskom’s side that homeowners and businesses need to register. As a result, many people are now faced with this “nasty surprise”.

Cruise explained that these solar systems need to be registered through Eskom’s Small Scale Embedded Generators (SSEG) programme because installing a solar system without the help of a reputable company involves risks.

This application, which reputable companies will ensure is performed on every installation, essentially entails that a professionally registered and qualified electrical engineer inspects the system, confirms that it complies with fire safety standards, and ensures that it won’t export electricity to the grid when it shouldn’t.

Cruise said this also impacts the safety of Eskom’s power lines because if electricity is present on the line when it is expected to be neutral, it could endanger the lives of Eskom workers.

“So, it is an important process to undergo when doing a solar installation, but it wasn’t well publicised, especially during the energy crisis,” he said.

Apart from not informing the public properly, there were a number of other mistakes Eskom made, which contributed to people not registering their solar systems.

One of these is the fact that Eskom had a large backlog of applications during the height of load-shedding.

Cruise said that after the SSEG application is assembled and sent to Eskom, it currently takes one to three months for the utility to approve it before the system can be switched online.

However, at one point, the wait time was around six months, “and that was unacceptable when we only had power for half the day”.

As a result, the system was often built and put online before the application was approved.

According to Cruise, a major reason people didn’t register was Eskom’s threat of increasing electricity costs for solar users.

Around 2022/23, Eskom said they would penalise households and businesses that get solar by charging them more for the electricity they use.

This is because many of them essentially used Eskom’s grid as a battery, relying on solar power during the day and switching to Eskom in the evenings and mornings.

As a result, the overall demand on the grid was reduced, which meant that Eskom would need to increase the price of electricity to households and businesses with solar to make up for these lost costs.

Eskom considered two ways to do this, Cruise explained. Firstly, they could charge these solar users more for electricity when they were using Eskom power. Secondly, they could increase the fixed costs to 70% of the user’s electricity bill.

Currently, fixed costs are 30% of the electricity bill and usage is 70%.

Because of these proposed increased charges, people were dissuaded from registering their solar panels with Eskom.

For solar users who were unaware that they needed to register or who were afraid of the potential extra costs associated with doing so, Cruise advised that they do their application now since Eskom has waived the application fee until March.

He also recommended that those with solar ensure that the inspecting engineer confirms that their certificate of compliance (COC) is up to date since insurance companies could refuse to cover resulting fire damage if this is not done.

“There have been very unfortunate situations where businesses had a fire as a result of a poor quality installation from inferior installers, and then realize that they’re not going to get actually any payout from the insurance company because there was no COC that was updated and no SSEG application that was done.”

Now that people are getting the correct inspections done for their SSEG applications during this grace period, households are facing costs of up to R50,000 for necessary infrastructural or safety improvements.

The cost could be even higher for businesses, Cruise said, especially where they hired unreputable, “fly-by-night” installers who installed the solar system completely incorrectly.

Some of these installers placed solar panels facing the wrong direction or even created a potential fire hazard, for example. But now, these installers are “nowhere to be seen”.

Where this is the case, some solar users may decide that their best option is simply to reinstall the system completely, which could be a significant expense.