Financial Feasibility of Solar PV within eThekwini Municipality - Business Customers

Abstract

Rising electricity tariffs, electricity shortages, under frequency load shedding, Carbon Taxes and reducing costs of solar PV systems in South Africa has made investment in solar PV a lucrative option to many business customers. However, revenue loss remains a major concern to the municipalities who have historically designed bundled business tariffs which relies on the municipality selling electricity to ensure business sustainability. Municipalities have come up with many new proposed tariff structures to try and counter act the impact of reduced electricity sales by implementing net billing tariffs with fixed costs based on the customer inverter size. An investigation was carried out to better understand the impact on the feasibility of a business roof top solar PV systems with and without the implementation of the new net billing electricity tariffs, as well as its impact on the customer’s payback periods. The eThekwini Municipalities proposed Business and General Net Billing Feed in Tariff was utilized for the case studies.