News24 | Good news for solar users: Eskom drops registration fees until further notice

Eskom has extended solar registration fee waivers for its customers indefinitely.

Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

• Eskom has extended a waiver for solar registration-related fees indefinitely.
• The utility has backed off on expensive registration requirements and potential penalties related to solar registration.
• The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse welcomed the decision to extend the fee waiver, but said that Eskom must still explain why registration is compulsory for customers who are not feeding power into the grid.
• For more financial news, visit News24 Business.

Eskom customers with solar systems at their homes or businesses will no longer have to pay registration fees, after the utility let its second deadline pass without enforcing it.

On Wednesday evening, Eskom announced that its customers with small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) systems of up to 50kVA that are connected to the grid will qualify for a waiver of registration-related fees until further notice.

It initially set March 2026 as the deadline for the fee registration waiver, which was later extended to the end of September 2026.

For some years now, Eskom has been encouraging its customers with grid-tied SSEG systems, which are practically all solar systems, to register their installations with the utility.

Eskom has argued that registration is important for grid stability and safety and is a legal requirement under the Electricity Regulation Act.

Initially, Eskom claimed it could impose tamper fines if one of its customers had not registered their system by the end of a waiver period. It was also offering a waiver from certain registration-related fines, including smart meter installation and certain technical assessment costs, totalling around R9 000.

Eskom has since backed down from threatening to fine people who have not registered their systems and has removed parts of the application process that were expensive and had to be borne by applicants.

READ | Eskom backtracks on most expensive step in solar registration process

Chris Yelland, the managing director at EE Business Intelligence, recently said the only threat Eskom has maintained is its claim to the right to disconnect a customer’s supply if it deems the customer’s solar or battery energy storage system unsafe.

READ | Chris Yelland: Rooftop solar - Eskom insists it can cut you off for being ‘unsafe’

Yelland argued that Eskom would not be able to cut off a customer who held a Certificate of Compliance issued by a registered electrician for their installation unless it could prove the certificate was invalid.

The key question remains

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), which has been instrumental in applying pressure on Eskom to justify its approach to solar registration, said that the indefinite extension of the fee waiver is progress.

“This is good progress, and we appreciate that Eskom has listened to the concerns raised by OUTA and the public,” OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage said in a statement.

However, Duvenhage said the fee-waiver extension did not address the fundamental question of why Eskom insists registration is compulsory.

“The various fees and meter upgrade costs may have been taken off the table for now, but the bigger question remains: why should a household be compelled to register a safe, compliant solar system that sits behind its meter and does not feed electricity back into Eskom’s network?” Duvenage said.

He said Eskom should clearly explain the legal basis for the registration requirement and what practical problem it solves.

OUTA acknowledged that prior approval makes sense when a customer intends to feed electricity back into the grid.