At this stage in South Africa’s renewable energy journey, various factors are at play, which does not make the decision any easier. One of these factors is that each municipality handles the connection of these systems to the grid, differently. Yet, as the price of electricity continues to increase more municipalities are in the process of putting procedures in place for connecting solar PV systems to their grid and in some cases feeding-in.

Analysis of the payback should take into account net metering or feed-in tariffs (where available) where surplus power is fed back into the grid, and tax credits (e.g. Section 12B Tax Allowance) and energy subsidies or incentives (if available).

There is a common miss-perception among consumers that investing in solar PV will take them “off-grid” and they will no longer have to pay Eskom or their municipality for power. While this is possible, PV systems that enable a normal household to go “off-grid” are very expensive and potentially intricate to operate. It is thus very important to understand what your solar PV system can do and this depends on what type of system you are investigating.