This morning apparently the entire area has no electricity due to maintenance on the local substation and I was totally unaware. Having a decent sized solar installation means there is no worries and life continues as normal. Normally I am only made aware of any problems when I hear the generators kick into life, but today I guess everyone is sitting this one out. I also think it is that time of the month where many households just do not have the budget and will rather keep the generators for the evenings if required as their is always uncertainty whether the electricity actually comes back on as planned. We have known from previous experience to expect unforeseen problems and always allow a few more hours just in case so a 4pm switch on could in theory be a 6pm or 7pm switch over.
What is good about this is that we are living what we would call anormal life these days much like everyone else around the world who takes electricity for granted. In SA we have never had this luxury for the last 15 years and you have to keep an eye open for load shedding announcements because that is the normal life that is being lived here.
Just double checked my solar app making sure things are operating normally and we are at 98% and charging which has now turned to 99% so within the next few minutes we will be at 100% and discharging the extras. This would normally feed back to the grid earning myself some credits but I am not interested in getting involved with that as that brings other hassles. The day is a cloudy one so this bodes well even if we have overcast days.
My electrician and solar installer mentioned to me the other day that when he was working on the electric fence someone from the power supply company was doing meter readings and he took a photograph of the house. This is more about taking a photograph of the solar panels on the roof as we have not registered with our supplier.
The reason behind all of this is they would like me to register the solar installation and bill me R30K. I find this utter madness as the only reason I have solar is because of their lack of supply. Penalising houses or businesses that want to function normally using green energy should be promoted and not penalised.
I informed my solar installer that this was the reason behind this and he said we need to get off the grid. The R30K penalty can rather be invested into the system which will get us very close to being off the grid. I need to do the gas installation for the kitchen and also the geyser conversion on top of all of this so maybe another R60K ($3.5K) all in.
The power supply wants to have a meter installed for the houses who have solar and they will be charged at different rates notably much higher and double the normal rates in most cases. Here I am saving money and helping the grid by using less and now they want to double my rates to help get them back lost revenue. There is no other choice, but to kiss the grid good bye and will only be achieved by investing more. All this is going to do is the power supplier is going to lose all of the expected revenue as leaving the grid is being forced upon anyone who has solar.