Cape Town businesses and households have broken through the R55-million earnings mark since the start of the city’s Cash for Power programme in 2022/23, until January 31 this year.

Cape Town is the first metro to buy excess solar PV power from small-scale generators, with more than 1 840 small-scale power sellers now participating.

Under the Cash for Power programme, the city first credited a power seller’s total municipal bill automatically, as far as to zero, generating a cash saving.

Since 2023/24, businesses and households have had the option to apply to earn cash once their municipal bill reaches a zero balance.

Investment in small-scale generation has boomed in Cape Town as residents moved to mitigate loadshedding.

As it stands, the city can purchase power in exchange for cash from a total of 176 MVA of cumulative installed small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) capacity.

“We are delighted to reach the R50-million mark in Cash for Power earnings for Capetonians,” says Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

“In fact, we are on track to double earnings in 2024/25 compared to the first year of our programme.

“We will buy as much excess power from Capetonians as they are able to sell us.

“The return of Eskom’s loadshedding shows that we must keep moving at pace towards a more energy secure Cape Town that is less reliant on Eskom.”

The R55-million in earnings include R43.1-million on the feed-in tariff, plus a further R12.9-million when including the 25c/kWh incentive the city has added to encourage participation.

Of the 1 842 sellers, 1 090 are residential and 752 are commercial/industrial.

For 2024/25, the residential feed-in tariff is 92.13c and 82.06c for non-residential, with both categories benefitting from the 25c a unit incentive (all figures excluding VAT).

“It is important to note that customers do not need to apply for the Cash for Power programme if they only wish to offset their electricity and rates accounts against their total cumulated energy fed back into the city grid,” says CoCT Energy MMC Xanthea Limberg.

“They will automatically be credited on authorisation of their grid-tied SSEG system.”