Cape Town businesses and households have broken through the R50 million earnings mark since the start of the City’s Cash for Power programme in 2022/23.
Cape Town is the first metro to buy excess solar PV power from small-scale generators, with over 1 800 small scale power sellers now participating.
Under the Cash for Power programme, the City first credits a power seller’s total municipal bill automatically down to zero, generating a cash saving. Since 2023/24, both businesses and households also now have the option to apply to earn cash once their municipal bill reaches a zero balance.
Investment in small-scale generation has boomed in Cape Town as residents moved to mitigate load-shed-ding and take advantage of City incentives, including reduced red tape and costs to install solar.
As it stands, the City can purchase power in exchange for cash from a total of 176MVA of cumulative installed SSEG capacity in Cape Town. “We are delighted to reach theR50m mark in Cash for Power earnings for Capetonians. In fact we are on track to double earnings in 2024/25 compared to the first year of our pro-gramme,” said Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
“This shows the extent to which households and businesses have invested in solar, and we are glad to see so many people selling back to the City in exchange for cash savings on their municipal bills and actual cash payouts.“We will buy as much excess power from Capetonians as they are able to sell us. The return of Eskom’s load shedding shows that we must keep moving at pace towards amore energy secure Cape Town that is less reliant on Eskom.”
Cape Town businesses and households have already earned over R55m, largely in municipal bill credits, since the start of the 2022/23 financial year until January 31, 2025.This figure includes R43.1m on the feed-in tariff, plus a further R12.9m when including the 25c per kWh incentive the City has added to encourage participation.
As of February 1, there were1 842 sellers benefitting from Cape Town’s Cash for Power scheme as part of the City’s broader plans to end load shedding over time. Of these sellers, 1 090 are residential and 752 are commercial/industrial. For 2024/25, the residential feed-in tariff is 92.13 cents and82.06 cents for non-residential, with both categories benefitting from the 25c per unit incentive (all figures excl VAT).