"The regulator recently adopted a principles document which included categorising South African power users into three main groups:
"Big power users — characterised by consistent day and night usage.
"Normal power users — characterised by high demand in the mornings and evenings, with lower power usage during the day.
"On-grid solar and self-generating power users — characterised by fluctuating power demands dependent on the availability of sunlight.
Nersa also adopted a principle that each user category must pay tariffs based on the actual cost of providing them with electricity."
As usual those of us with battery backup systems are left out. Since 2008, I've been offering to sell electricity to the grid at peak times, which could be outside solar hours, usually 6 till 8am and 4 to 7pm. How to do this? Use batteries, and East West Solar Panels lengthening the solar day and flattening the curve (someone stole this term from solar users). It is actually stupid to have all your panels facing north in a battery backup system, as you want to lengthen the solar day as much as possible.
As an alternative to this, I can remove myself from the grid at peak times and never use electricity at peak times. I should get a much better rate for this.
For decades Eskom and Nersa have been going on about "solar users generating lots of electricity during the day and then consuming it at night." That is old. It's grid tie, without batteries.
Most people in South Africa don't want load shedding and therefore have batteries in their solar systems. Some have batteries and inverters only and no solar. All these people can contribute to the grid reducing the need for Eskom to spend Billions of Rands per month on expensive diesel generation running at peak times.
#electricity #peakdemand #solarelectricity #tariff
