Solar technology company Wetility has provided a preview of its One Bill offering, which it describes as a comprehensive energy management system designed to increase solar adoption in South Africa.

One Bill, which is officially being launched on May 1, 2026, acts as an integrated system that aims to simplify energy management by offering a holistic solar and grid energy experience. With this in mind, Wetility’s One Bill system offers a redefined subscription model designed to eliminate barriers to solar adoption by combining grid and solar electricity into a single, seamless bill.

Speaking at Wetility’s ‘The Energy Leap: Showcasing the Power of Investment in Innovation’ event, Wetility co-founder and chief product officer Ikenna Oguguo highlighted a gap in the domestic adoption of solar in the residential and commercial market.

“It's one payment you make to the utility that settles your entire energy experience and we will do everything else on the back end to ensure you are fully taken care of. It's one place, one app, one entity to deal with and zero premium,” Oguguo stated at the event, noting that One Bill will offer a guaranteed net savings.

Oguguo explained that high costs, credit barriers and a poor customer experience are driving factors which hinders the adoption of solar. Additionally, because consumers focus primarily on cost-effectiveness rather than their energy needs when choosing their solar systems, Oguguo pointed out that about 60% to 65% of solar systems installed in the residential market are incorrectly sized.

One Bill will rectify the sizing issue. Using historic usage data, the solar system is sized precisely to each customer’s needs. As those needs evolve, AI-driven monitoring automatically prompts Wetility to adjust system capacity, ensuring savings remain locked in.

 “It will prompt you. It will tell you what battery increase you need, what panel increase you need and how much you would gain from increasing versus how much you would pay from increasing, and all you have to do is just click,” Oguguo explained during a One Bill live demo on October 3.

With One Bill, Wetility eliminates the need for customers to juggle two separate entities – the grid provider on one side and a solar provider on the other by consolidating everything into a single, seamless subscription. Hence, the system pre-charges the user by predicting how much energy is produced by solar and how much electricity is consumed from the grid.

“One Bill leverages AI to predict customers’ expected energy consumption and immediately issues adequate electricity tokens from each energy supplier. This simplifies the entire experience via patent-protected technology from Wetility,” Oguguo said in a media release.

Moreover, built-in smart alerts and real-time monitoring – including Wetility’s award-winning AI Mode - ensure customers are never left in the dark unexpectedly. Wetility’s AI Mode is integrated into the system and can predict a user’s consumption, ensuring that customers have the benefit of both, reliable backup power and high electricity bill savings.

“One Bill is designed to improve the economic and service experience of our customers. Wetility will be transparently showing guaranteed savings with One Bill, because solar should be a mainstream solution to energy cost, rather than an added expense to take on,” Oguguo said in the release.

Wetility CEO and founder Vincent Maposa, meanwhile, emphasised the importance of collaboration and innovation in the energy sector, noting that Wetility aims to power one-million homes and businesses by 2029.

“By building even more confidence among our customers and backing it up with better service and better products, we want to inspire belief in the impossible every single day,” he said.

In a similar vein, South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) CEO Dr Rethabile Melamu stressed the importance of increasing funding for research and development (R&D) and commercialisation of solar technology to address issues such as long lead times and the expensive nature of commercialisation.

“We support these organisations because . . . we are very cognisant of the role that they can play in reviving or contributing to economic growth,” she said, warning that a lack of R&D funding could lead to a missed opportunity in terms of creating employment for young people.

“Not only is our industry well positioned to create the jobs to revive the economy, but it is also well positioned to curb the impact of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.