• City Power has hiked the price of electricity for all residents and businesses by 14.97 percent.
• Businesses are also saddled with two surcharges while residents will be charged a Network Surcharge after using 500kWh per month.
• Feed-in tariffs for those with solar solutions are also being floated at R0.80 for residential customers.

Residents in Johannesburg are paying more for electricity as of this month in-line with tariff hikes approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

The increase sees Johannesburg residents paying R2.10 more per kWh in block one which accounts for usage up to 350kWh. Once customers go over the 350kWh threshold, the rate increases to R2.41 per kWh at Block 2.

“To simplify it, our prepaid customer with a usage of 350 kWh monthly will increase to R2.10/kWh for block 1 or by R95.55 to R733.85 per month exclusive of VAT. Customers using 374kWh/m will be charged an additional R7.52 paying R57.72 at block 2 tariffs (R2.41/kWh) for the additional 24kWhs, the total cost will be R791.57/m (R103.07 extra),” writes the utility.

“To save cost customers are advised to at the beginning of the month buy electricity 350kWh only, for R733.85 plus VAT (R843.93) and to use it sparingly,” the utility added.

Frankly speaking 350kWh is not a lot of electricity especially for families. For households with backup power solutions that charge up from mains after loadshedding, 350kWh can disappear very quickly.

To put it plainly, residential, business, agricultural and large power users are seeing a 14.97 percent increase for electricity prices.

“Although Nersa has approved most of the tariff increases as applied, it has changed City Power’s application with regards to the Business Tariffs affecting business prepaid, conventional and business conventional reseller customers also to 14.97 percent,” the City said.

The utility had only applied for a 13.83, 14.8 and 1.42 percent increase for business prepaid, conventional and business conventional resellers respectively.

But wait, it gets worse, at least for Johannesburg business owners.

“All customers, will in addition to the above charges be liable for a Network Surcharge of 6c/kWh. Residential customers are, however, exempt from the Network Surcharge for the first 500kWh consumer per month,” City Power announced.

Business and large power customers will also be hit with a percent surcharge on top of the Network Surcharge.

We have saved some good news for the end. City Power is working to launch a feed-in tariff where residents can sell any excess power they generate through solar power to the utility. The feed-in tariff is currently approved for R0.85/kWh for residential embedded generation and R0.70/kWh for large power users embedded generation.

While this may help some residents, if City Power buys that power and sells it back to consumers, it’s making R1.25 on each kWh it sells at block 1 prices. Of course, the utility would need to maintain the infrastructure needed for those feed-in customers and other areas of the network so those costs were more than likely factored into these prices.

[Image – Steve Buissinne from Pixabay]