ENCOURAGE LOW COST POWER PROCUREMENT FROM RESIDENTS
From "Comment on the City’s draft Budget for 2026-2027"
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The highest cost driver is the Eskom price increase.
Although the city has made progress in automating the SSEG approval process and finding lower cost bi-directional residential electricity (AMI) meters for residential owners, the requirement that residents must provide meter housing on the boundary wall still makes it prohibitively expensive to export electricity. This has limited the extent to which the city can buy low cost electricity from its own residents.
The prohibitive installation costs of meter housing on the border wall can be addressed by making use of split phase bi-directional smart meters that can be installed in existing meter housing. Currently the city is installing split phase pre-paid meters. The same infrastructure used for the meters can be used for split phase bi-directional smart meters.
The insecurity of the longevity feed-in tariff adds to the hesitance for homeowners to invest in these meters. CoCT should announce their long term intention regarding the feed-in incentive of R0.25 / kWh, since payback for the required AMI meter is currently longer than 3 years.
An additional benefit of this is that electricity prosumers remain as electricity customers and do not disconnect from the grid.
The city can get additional benefits by adding residential prosumers in a pool and claiming carbon credits for these residents.