Capetonians earn more than R25m selling excess solar PV power to city

Cape Town businesses and households have earned more than R25m for their excess solar PV power since the start of the 2022/23 financial year under the city’s “cash for power” programme.

Cape Town became the first metro offering cash payments for excess power generated via solar PV installations — in addition to municipal bill credits up to a zero balance — being fed back into the grid. Businesses have benefited from the cash for power scheme since June last year and now residents can too.

Previously the city purchased excess power from commercial and residential small-scale generation, but only to offset their clients’ electricity bills up to a zero balance. Businesses and private households electing to do so, can now earn money over and above that.

“The city will buy as much solar power as households and businesses can sell to us under the cash for power programme, with 25-million kilowatt-hours (kWh) already bought as at February 1,” said mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis on Monday. “In the 2022/2023 financial year, we paid more than R10.5m to Capetonians for their power, and in the current financial year we’ve already paid over R8.8m. That’s a total of R19.4m just on the feed-in tariff alone, plus a further R6.4m when including the 25c per kWh incentive we’ve added to encourage participation.”

There are 1,461 sellers benefiting from the scheme, of which 869 are residential and 592 commercial.

The incentive scheme is part of a longer-term plan to add up to one gigawatt of independent power supply in the city over time, “with the first 650MW of this within five years”. This would be enough to protect against four stages of load-shedding.

“We are transitioning this city’s energy mix to a far more decentralised supply of reliable, cost-effective and increasingly carbon neutral energy that will come from a diverse range of suppliers,” said Hill-Lewis

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