Six months have passed since the Overstrand Municipality took the first steps to encourage residents and businesses to install  their  own electricity generating systems.

Since then, numerous applications have been received and interest is still growing on how households and/or businesses who generate their own, can feed their surplus electricity into the  municipal  grid  for the Municipality to purchase.

The Overstrand Guidelines for Small Scale Embedded Generation (SSEG) gives all consumers with SSEG installations the opportunity to apply for a grid-tied connection.

This means that these con-sumers apply for municipal approval, install a “bi-direc-tional” meter and then have the opportunity to be compensated for each unit fed-back into the municipal grid at an annually approved municipal tariff.

The most important thing to keep in mind however is, you need to be a NET consumer.

This means that you may not put back more units into the grid than you use from it.

As mentioned above, the SSEG Guidelines provide the opportunity to be grid-tied. There are, however, still consumers who connect to the municipality’s network illegally.

Overstrand Municipality  hereby request all consumers to ensure that they have the necessary approval in place when they connect anything to the municipal network. From 1 July 2016 penalties were instated in accordance with the municipallity’s electricity supply by-law for all illegal SSEG connections. These illegal connections will be treated in the same light as any other illegal connection. Failure to comply with the municipal regulations will result in disconnection of services as well as a tamper fee.

How does the compensation work?

The client will pay for the installation of a bidirectional meter as per the annual approved municipal tariffs.

Consumers currently on credit meter tariffs will remain unchanged and prepaid consumers will be converted back to credit meter tariffs.

A standard household SSEG account will reflect the following (Not time of use):

Basic monthly service charge; Monthly Infrastructure charge; Consumption costs as per block tariffs; Total units fed back into the municipal grid x approved tariff  (credited).

Please Note:

Customers wishing to install a SSEG system, regardless of its generation capacity, have to complete an application form and written approval will be requested from the Municipality prior to commencement of system procurement and installation.

The approval process for a SSEG installation will vary, depending on the size of the system and consumer category.

For more information, complete guideline, tariffs and all forms, click on:

http://www.overstrand.gov.za/en/documents/electricity.

Enquiries in this regard can be addressed to the Electricity Department of the Municipality at 028 313 8000 / 028 384 8358 / 028 316 2630, or email to enquiries@overstrand.gov.za.

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