In a show to the National Energy Regulatory of South Africa (NERSA), the power utility said the increment was incompletely being driven by buys from free power markers international Power Products (IPPs) and carbon charges – two costs which are outside of Eskom’s immediate control. These two costs alone make up around 13,8% of the mentioned increment, it said.

The gathering has likewise shown that it depends to request a further 15,07% increment in 2024 and a 10% increment in 2025. In any case, this will rely upon the genuine increment that NERSA awards Eskom this year with the controller seldom giving the power utility the full increment that is requested.

On 5 March 2021, NERSA supported a climb of 15,06% for Eskom’s immediate clients, which was accordingly carried out on 1 April 2021. A climb of 17,80% for districts was carried out on 1 July 2021. Far beyond the mentioned levy increment, Eskom said it is as yet reliant upon additional value support given by the public authority to stay a going concern.

It added that each work is being made to track down additional efficiencies inside the business, to address defilement and extortion, and to make advances into tending to city and other obligation. Eskom added that the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and the related lockdown limitations in South Africa have had extensive outcomes and added significant descending force to a generally compromised economy.

The post Increment in electricity price. appeared first on Powertime.

JOHANNESBURG – The City of Johannesburg on Thursday said exactly that as it was aware of the intense monetary environment and pressure on residents, its rates and assessment increments increases effectively one week from now were directed by expanding operating costs

Electricity rates are now up by 14.59%, followed by sanitation and water tariffs by 6.8%. Refusal removal rates are up by 4.3% whole property rate increased by 2%.

The high power climb is connected to the energy controller Nersa giving Eskom the go-ahead to charge clients and municipality more.

City Power’s Frank Hinda said: “We’re also on the receiving end as far as this is concerned. We’re cushioning the customer given that our increase from Eskom is higher.”

“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a devastating impact on lives and livelihoods of Johannesburg residents. This has seen many people struggling to keep up with their municipal accounts as you would all have seen. This has subsequently affected the collection of municipal rates and taxes that are a source of revenue for continued service delivery.”

Hinda said he understood that the 14.59% power climb passed on  to clients would hit residents pockets hard given the current monetary environment.

The average electricity user – prepaid or conventional – consuming 800 kilowatt-hours a month – can expect to fork out somewhere in the range  R200 and R260 more a month.

The post Tariff Increase 1 July 2021 appeared first on Powertime.

Warm the bed with electric blanket

For your comfort bed time during the cold temperature, you can use electric blanket to make your bed warmer. you do not have to switch it on all the night. You can just turn it on for a moment, just about two hours before your sleep time and switch the electric blanket off to save the electricity and have a nice bed time.

In the day, South Africa may have the sun shining brightly in the winter. Contrast to the day, the temperature significantly reduces into freezing at night. This condition triggers the increasing of electricity usage. So, we hope that some tips above can be your alternative reference of saving money during the winter.

As explained above, electric heater consumers more energy than any other devices during the winter. So be wise in usage. One way to save electricity in the winter is by applying just one heater in a house. The best place that probably suitable is the family room. The winter gives the chance to make the family members staying together. Rather than applying electric heater in each private room, It is better to install a heater in your living room. Though this way, you can save energy and enjoy your quality time with your family.

The post Saving electricity in winter appeared first on Powertime.

The tweet stated that “Please switch off any unnecessary lights, geyser, pool pump, and non-essential appliances such as dishwashers” this is very crucial to beat load-shedding during winter.

Andre de Ruyter told the Parliament that the risk of load-shedding in the next quarter had reduced substantially compared with their previous predictions.

“After lockdown, we will see the initial 31 days of the stage 1 load-shedding that we had anticipated for the next quarter being reduced to only three days,” said De Ruyter.

He continues by saying this was based on a load reduction of 2,000MW due to the impact of the corona virus pandemic on electricity usage.

Mantshansha said despite demand picking up since alert 4 of the lockdown was implemented, Eskom does not expect load-shedding to be required any time soon. he also stated that “Eskom is comfortable it has the capacity to supply electricity without the need to implement load-shedding” but he also encourages consumers to better manage demand and use electricity sparingly and to smooth out the winter demand profile.

While the risk of the load-shedding is always there, Eskom expects to go through the winter without having to implement load-shedding. At most, our plan makes provision for three days of load-shedding.

The post No load-shedding during winter appeared first on Powertime.

Dear Powertime Users,

Due to the recent announcement by Payments Association of South African (PASA) increased card fees significantly, users purchasing by the card will incur a 3,5% VAT inclusive fee from the 1st April 2020. We remind our users that Instant EFT and EFT payment do not incur any fees.

Powertime

The post Card fee increase appeared first on Powertime.

Recently, we have been inundated with request about electricity tariffs. Mostly with regards to why certain some users are receiving less units for the same amount in rands than they have previously. For the purposes of budgeting, it would be helpful to know what it cost to run the various appliances in your household. The purpose of this blog is to go into a bit of detail into what exactly an electricity tariff is and how it is measured. We also provide you with a helpful tool to measure how much units you typically use, and this should help you with financial planning with regards to energy spend in your household.

How is electricity measured?

So, how is electricity measured? This is an important question to begin to understand how an electricity tariff works. Electricity power is measured in terms of units, called watts. Most applicances in a household requires well in excess of 1,000 watts in order to function properly, which is why we generally refer to electrical power as kilowatts. Each kilowatt representing 1,000 watts. So how is this calculated? If you take an example of a 100 watt ceiling fan, and use it for two hours a day for 30 days, you have used 100 watts of power for 60 hours.

This calculates as 100 watts x 60 hours = 6000 watt-hours of electrical energy. Or 6 kilowatt-hours (kWh) which is the measurement of electricity units.

What does it mean?

If we look at Eskom’s small customer tariffs (which is most households in South Africa), the electricity used is billed as an energy charge. This is calculated in cents per kilowatt. (c/kWh). Now, this charge (c/kWh) differs per municipality and also differs per household, depending on the tariff they are on. This is a set amount based or determined by how much electricity a house-hold uses. Those who consumes above 600kWh are charged higher tariffs (c/kWh) as those who use below 600 kWh. Remember kWh stands for Kilowatts per Hour, as calculated above

For more a deeper break-down into tariffs, click here

How do I calculate how much my appliances are costing me?

This is where it might become a bit tricky. How do I calculate how much an appliance is costs to operate? Well, once you know which tariff you are on, you need to multiply the amount of kWh a particular appliance uses by the energy rate (c/kWh) applicable to your tariff and divide by 100 to get to the Rand value. So, if we take the above example and use Eskom’s block 1 tariff for residential users, the energy charge is 153,90c/kWh (including VAT) The calculation would be as follows:

6kWh x 153,90c/kWh = 923.4/100= R9.23

So, as we can see in this example, it costs R9,23 to run a 100 watt ceiling fan, 2 hours a day for 30 days. City Power has a very nifty tool that can help you calculate this as well, see this link  for more.

As we know, this is getting costlier every year and it might be time to look at other, more eco-friendly solutions of powering your home.

The post What is an Electricity Tariff? appeared first on Powertime.

A list of demands was published by the Gauteng Movement which includes:

• A flat rate for electricity for all residents of Gauteng
• Scrapping of all prepaid maters
• Re-connection all houses with no electricity
• An end of load shedding
• Scrapping of all Apartheid debts
• Electrification for all informal settlements
• Publicly owned renewable energy production

A spokesman from the Gauteng electricity movement said debts of the Apartheid regime was inherited which is the cause of them struggling so much.

“That is why today they want s to pay for electricity. Electricity is a basic right. Everyone, starting from Gauteng, the other provinces- we are not going to pay,” he said.

The movement stated that this problem affects the whole of South Africa and not just Soweto. On Tuesday the 25th of February 2020 they had their first March and the plan was to bring several areas in Gauteng to a stop/Standstill. This, however, did not happen. Trevor Ngwane from the movement said this is only the first of many rounds in the fight. He said they are ready to action more protects in future now that they know “muscle of the enemy”

He has said before they are not able to keep up due to the high tariffs and that is why they are not paying for electricity.

“The difference between us and the rest of the country is that we are fighting (the issue), we are defending our grannies and defending the vulnerable,” he said.

When asked why Soweto does not pay and the rest of the country does, Ngwane replied that Soweto residents have “fighting spirit”.

In a few words, Gauteng electricity movement threatens National Shutdown over electricity.

The post National Shutdown Over Electricity appeared first on Powertime.

This comes after heavy pressure from National Treasury, who imposed municipal debt recovery as a mandatory condition to it’s R59bn life-line, thus the disconnection warnings. This “bail-out”, was signed off by President Cyril Ramaphosa to assist Eskom repay it’s interest. The group debt burden amounts to some R450bn

The municipalities recently threatened with disconnection by Eskom, are Bloemfontein, Mafuba and Mantsopa. This comes after repeated failure to adhere to or honor payment agreements. These were agreed to by the municipalities and Eskom itself. So, what exactly are Eskom threatening to do if these municipalities do not pay up?

Eskom said that they would implement the following disconnection actions; Disconnecting the electricity supply to these municipalities between the times 06:00 and 20:00 during weekdays. As well as disconnections on the weekends following the 3rd December. However, they would be allowing power to be supplied over-night. An amount of 8 hours would be allowed for this to take place.

In other news, disconnections would also be facing the city of Soweto and some parts of the greater Gauteng area. This comes after investigations into meter tampering, as well as non-payment of electricity bills. Eskom says that out of the 180 000 electricity meters in Soweto, 120 000 were found to be tampered with. While in other regions of Gauteng, 490 000 out of the 760 000 energy meters, were found to have been tampered with.

The post Eskom’s Municipal Disconnection Operation appeared first on Powertime.

So if you’re not already aware of this new energy plan, let’s unpack it a little bit. The policy includes some surprising interventions. Some of these notable interventions include the following:

Coal Dependence

Currently, in terms of the total energy generation in South Africa, coal accounts for 77% of that across all it’s coal plants. According to the IRP, the projection is that by the year 2030, this percentage would have been reduced to somewhere in the region of 60% of all energy production in the country. So still heavily dependent on coal fired plants which environmentalist are especially not pleased about.

Renewable Energy?

Despite coal still playing a significant role in energy generation, there is space for a shift towards renewables. According to the IRP, government expects to hike the contribution made to the grid by wind generated energy infrastructures. In the initial draft version of the IRP, released last year, wind generated energy was only supposed to deliver 13% of SA’s electricity by 2030– this has now been increased to more than 18%.

By 2030, solar will supply 7% of electricity. Hydro plants will contribute 8%, nuclear 4.5% and the rest from gas and diesel.

New Coal Plants

The newly released IRP indicates that government notes a business case for the construction of modular and smaller power plants producing between 300mw and 600mw. Particularly in the face of some of the current fleet of power plants being decommissioned in the coming years. Nuclear is very expensive at commissioning and at decommissioning, but when it is operational it is “most reliable and cost effective,” Mantashe told journalists on Friday.

Nuclear reactors planned?

Montalto said that new nuclear capacity does not come onstream before 2030, but discussion of work to start on scoping new nuclear is in the plan for coming on grid beyond 2030.

The IRP argued that smaller nuclear plants will be easier managed investments when compared to large-scale projects. But government acknowledges that these could take more than 10 years to construct, and no additional nuclear power is set to come online before 2030.

The post Unpacking IRP2019 appeared first on Powertime.

They had extremely hard words for the ailing state-owned entity which was shared in a statement issued by COSATU, Wednesday evening. They slated the power utility for “haemorrhaging” money. This, in part, relates to the besieged power utility having incurred debt in excess of R400bn and suffering a net loss of R21bn in the 2018/2019 financial year.

Last week Eskom chair and acting CEO Jabu Mabuza painted a gloomy picture of Eskom’s finances, saying management was hard at work to revive as much of the entity as possible. Cosatu has called the standard of leadership at Eskom “mediocre”,  and further noted that load shedding is said to have contributed to the contraction of the economy by 3.2% in the first quarter of the year. That is devastating. And it’s no surprise that the rand fell sharply to the dollar, as soon as it was announced that Eskom will be implementing load-shedding. In their statement released to the media on Wednesday night, COSATU further stated:

“The announced load shedding flies in the face of the commitment made by the Minister of Public Enterprises to the Presidential Working Committee meeting at Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council) a mere week ago that Eskom is on top of the situation,”

COSATU called for a pubilc forensic audit of all expenses of Eskom, including all coal supplier contracts.  There was further criticism for the appointment of board chair Jabu Mabuza as acting CEO, calling the appointment “illegitimate”, and saying the decision had “contributed to the erosion of trust in the power utility”. Meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that soon, government will announce a new deal to assist Eskom deal with it’s debt crisis. This announcement will be made soon and would appease ratings agencies.

The post Cosatu wants action to be taken appeared first on Powertime.