Its always a bit worrying when Eskom wants to build more dirty low grade coal power stations and increase traffics to the consumer by 34%.

But theres some hope on the horizon. The National Energy Regulator (NERSA) recently published feed-in tarrifs for the different alternative energy types. Feed-in allows independant private power producers to sell energy back to Eskom at a guaranteed price.

Whats glaringly obvious is that there is no price for standard solar power (PV cells) – this will only be released in 6 months time, why?

The City of Cape Town has a 22c/kwH surcharge for Green Electricity, with standard consumer rates at 57c/kWh and commercial at 48.7c/kWh. This is about 50% more than current rates but definitely still attractive to small commercial customers.

The new feed-in tarrif creates several new business opportunities, a wind farm project at Hopefield up the West Coast has been announced and the landfill sites are being looked at to provide peak power by storing methane gas.

One thing that notably missing is a a higher feed-in tarrif during peak power usage times. Such a method would encourage the producers to store and release the energy during peak demand allowing Eskom to reduce its dependance on very expensive to run open cycle gas turbines that burn millions of litres of diesel each year.

Ref: City of Cape Town Tarrifs