Cape Town: City businesses and households have broken through the R50m earnings mark since the beginning of the Cash for Power programme of the City of Cape Town in 2022-23. Cape Town is the first metro to buy excess solar PV power from small-scale generators with more than 1800 small scale power sellers participating now.
Considering the Cash for Power programme, the City of Cape Town initially credits a power seller’s total municipal bill automatically down to zero, generating a cash saving. Both businesses and households, since 2023-24 have the option to apply to earn cash once their municipal bill reaches a zero balance.
The Investment in small-scale generation has boomed in Cape Town as residents moved to mitigate load-shedding and take advantage of City incentives, including the reduced red tape and costs to install solar. The city can also purchase power in exchange for cash from a total of 176MVA of cumulative installed SSEG capacity in Cape Town.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said that they are delighted to reach the R50m mark in Cash for Power earnings for Capetonians. He added that they are on track to double the earnings in 2024-25 compared to the first year of the programme.
According to Hill-Lewis, it shows the extent to which households and businesses have invested in solar and they are glad to see so many people selling back to the City of Cape Town in exchange for cash savings on their municipal bills and actual cash payouts.
Lewis highlighted that they will buy as much excess power from Capetonians as they are able to sell them. The return of Eskom’s load-shedding shows that they must keep moving at pace towards a more energy secure Cape Town that is less reliant on Eskom.
Cape Town has the most advanced plans for South Africa to buy power on the open market. More than three years they are further investing over R4 billion in electricity grid, that upgrades to enable the dynamic, decentralised energy future.
The city businesses and households have already earned over R55m, largely in municipal bill credits, since the start of the 2022-23 financial year until Jan 31, 2025. It has invested R43.1m on the feed-in tariff, plus a further R12.9m, including the 25c per kWh incentive the town has added to encourage participation.
As of Feb 01, 2025, they have involved 1842 sellers benefitting from Cape Town’s Cash for Power scheme as part of the broader plans of the city to end load-shedding over time. Out of all these sellers, 1090 are residential and 752 are commercial or industrial.
Member of the Mayoral Committee for Energy – Alderman Xanthea Limberg said that through key policy changes, the City of Cape Town was able to drive power sales by small-scale generators and make it simpler for people to invest in generation capacity.
They have also launched a new online portal to register your solar PV system easier than ever, as well as cheaper bi-directional meter to feed power back into the grid.
It is important to note that the customers do not need to apply for the cash for power programme if they only wish to offset their electricity and rates accounts against their total cumulated energy, fed back into city grid. Limberg said that they will automatically be credited on authorisation of their grid-tied SSEG system.