Eskom customers with rooftop solar have two weeks left to claim a waiver on registration and connection costs, even as Outa challenges whether many need to register.
The state-owned power company has extended its waiver of registration, quotation, connection and metering costs for small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) systems up to 50kVA until September 30 2026. It says the concession is worth about R10,000 for an urban customer and up to R36,000 for a rural one — figures Outa energy adviser Chris Yelland argues are understated.
Outa argues that Eskom is imposing unnecessary bureaucracy on households whose solar installations already have a valid electrical certificate of compliance (CoC).
Yelland tells the FM that the CoC is the legally required proof that an installation is safe and that registration adds no safety protection. He argues that neither Eskom nor the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has jurisdiction over the safety of low-voltage installations on a customer’s premises.
Residential systems lack a formal point of connection under the South African Grid Code, he says, and fall instead under the chief inspector at the department of employment & labour, who enforces the Occupational Health & Safety Act and SANS 10142-1.
Eskom disagrees.
Spokesperson Daphne Mokwena says the law requires SSEG owners tied to the grid to register with their supplier, whether or not they export power. Guidance covers households and businesses below 100kVA running in parallel with Eskom’s network; facilities above 100kVA register directly with Nersa. Systems that never run in parallel — such as an off-grid inverter kept only as backup — are exempt, though network charges still apply.
Eskom says registration isn’t just about wiring safety. A grid-connected solar installation can feed electricity back into the network, affect voltage and power quality and expose technicians working on lines to risk. Yelland counters that standard protocols — isolating, locking out, measuring and earthing circuits — already protect technicians, regardless of registration.
Eskom therefore requires a valid CoC, an inverter test certificate and an embedded-generation installation test report signed by someone registered with the department of employment & labour.
Registration also feeds Eskom’s demand forecasting and network planning.
Eskom denies immediate disconnections
Yelland dismisses that reasoning as a “red herring”. Registration would still give Eskom an incomplete measure of installed capacity, he says, since many go unregistered. The system operator already tracks behind-the-meter generation weekly, and satellite surveillance offers a more accurate read on capacity than a patchy registration database would.
Outa also sees a commercial motive. It argues that registration lets distributors shift solar customers off Homelight and Homepower tariffs onto Homeflex, a time-of-use tariff with higher fixed charges. That protects revenue as households buy less electricity from the grid.
“The real motives are tariff conversion for commercial reasons at significant cost to the customer,” Yelland says.
Mokwena rejects that suggestion. Eskom, she says, still has to maintain poles, wires and other infrastructure for customers who generate most of their own power but draw from the grid when solar can’t meet demand.
The utility points to the fee waiver as evidence that this isn’t about revenue. The concession covers registration, connection and, where required, a smart meter for qualifying systems until September 30.
The date itself has also become contentious.
Yelland says Eskom Distribution has warned some customers that failure to register could lead to disconnection — action Outa believes would be unlawful and could face a court challenge.
Mokwena says customers will not automatically be cut off because they remain unregistered after September 30. The date marks the end of the cost waiver, she says, after which Eskom will continue encouraging customers to comply.
Disconnection could occur, she says, if Eskom discovers that an installation is unsafe or is adversely affecting its network.
For solar owners deciding whether to register before the concession expires, what happens to the waived charges from October 1 is fairly clear. Whether Eskom is legally entitled to demand registration from every grid-parallel household system is anything but.
