The reason is a simple one: The Nelson Mandela Bay Electricity Department is the ONLY one in South Africa that allows you to Grid-Tie your renewable energy installation – like Solar PV – on a ONE FOR ONE basis *.
“Huh, how does that benefit me?” you ask.
Simple – this allows you, as the private consumer, to install enough Solar Panels on your roof to ELIMINATE your electricity account.
As a business consumer your can eliminate your CONSUMPTION account (you still have to pay an ‘availability’ fee) AND benefit from an accelerated depreciation allowance of 100%. In March 2016 the depreciation allowance in Section 12B of the Income Tax Act was amended to allow for certain sized installations (3 phase) to be a full 100% from the date of switch on.
* For every unit of electricity manufactured by your Solar Installation the Nelson Mandela Bay Electricity Department credits your electricity account with the equivalent selling price of that unit. If you ‘overproduce’ you also have the choice of selling your extra production to a local company – another reason why the NMBM Electricity Department is STREETS ahead of other municipalities when it comes to renewable energy.
Grid Tie Solar Installations are the most cost effective way to ZERO your electricity consumption AND lock in the ‘price you pay’ for 20-25 years.
The payback for domestic consumers is 6-7 years and, for business on 3-phase immediately (subject to certain provisos).
The 2018 prices for a complete grid connected installation without Battery backup run at from R17.50 to R20.00 per Watt installed, so a your system will cost you around R18 000 installed per Killowat – single phase consumers are allowed a maximum of 5 Kilowatts of generating power on their roofs. A 5 Kilowatt system will generate an annual monthly average of 960 units per month (more in summer and less in winter).
Domestic customers who connect their own PV system to the municipal grid will fall under the “Non-ATTP Domestic customer” tariff. This is a time of use tariff with a monthly basic charge of R60. Under this tariff customers are allowed to do net-metering, which allows customers to use the municipal grid as a battery. That means if the produced electricity is not used, the customer can feed back into the municipal grid and use it at a later stage.
Be aware that this electricity can only be used in the same category it was feed into the grid e.g. 10kWh were feed back during standard time, this 10 kWh can be used any other day that month during standard time.
Credits cannot be taken over to the next month.
Credits cannot be used in other time categories, e.g. 10 kWh were feed back into the grid during standard time and 10 kWh used at peak time. End of the month that 10 units in standard time will be set to 0 and the client has to pay 10kWh at peak tariff.
If you decide to install your own PV systems and connect it to the municipal grid, following conditions apply:
- The system must be registered with the municipality.
- For each installation a completed registration form must be submitted to the municipality. (Straton Solar will submit this form on your behalf.)
- Domestic customers will be registered on a new tariff, the “Non-ATTP Domestic customer – Time of use tariff”
- Details of the registration and the connection costs can be downloaded here.
- Straton Solar will ensure that your installation complies with the NRS standard 097-2-1 and NRS 097-2-3
When deciding on which company you will go for please consider beside the price also following points:
- How much experience does the company have? Ask for references of finished installations.
- Are they registered with thePV GreenCard ?
- Is the offered equipment certified for the South African market, are they meeting the NRS standards?
- What is the warranty on the different products?