Category Archives: Tariff and Revenue Impacts

This guideline describes the process and requirements for third party energy providers to wheel electrical energy on a Local Municipality’s distribution grid. This guideline will be regularly reviewed and amended to keep abreast with the rapid developments in the wheeling space, and as the municipality’s technical capacity is built through engagements with the wheeling industry.

This tool assists municipalities calculate the total cost of a network upgrade for the purpose of integrating new generators into the network.

As renewable energy costs decline and companies strive to decarbonise their power supply, there is a growing call for municipalities to facilitate wheeling of electricity across their distribution networks. This paper explores how municipalities can calculate use-of-system charges for providing access to their networks for wheeling (Dippenaar et al, 2022).

This spreadsheet assists municipalities determine their avoided purchase costs when an embedded generator exports electricity into the municipality’s distribution grid (SEA, 2022).

An excel-based tool for testing proposed SSEG tariffs against municipal revenue impact as well as customer business case impact. Solar PV SSEG only. The guide to using the tool is separately downloadable.

This paper provides a practical step-by-step guide to performing a COS study, using the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA)-endorsed simplified COS tool. The methodology described is based on NERSA’s COS Framework and draws on the NRS 058 where needed. The input data is kept as simple as reasonably possible, and assumptions are explicitly described. These assumptions are the crux of where COS approaches differ vastly, and this paper brings these assumptions to light for others to replicate and build on. (SEA & NERSA, 2021)

This paper analysis the impact of small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) on the cost of running South Africa’s power system. It investigates whether utility-scale solar PV is cheaper than embedded generation. SSEG reduces overall system costs by reducing electricity losses and resulting fuel expenditure, and, in instances where peak demand is reduced, by reducing capital expenditure on network upgrades and peaking power plants. However, the upfront capital cost of utility-scale solar PV is lower (due to economies of scale) and usually has a higher capacity factor (due to optimum location and orientation, and the use of trackers) when compared to SSEG. This paper quantifies the tradeoffs associated with installing SSEG in various sectors in South Africa compared to installing the same amount of utility-scale PV. A comprehensive full-system model was built to answer this question. (SEA, 2021)

NERSA developed the Cost of Supply (COS) Framework for licensed electricity distributors (‘licensees’) in South Africa. The framework will be used as a guideline to licensees when developing their COS studies.

The NRS 058 is a draft Cost of Supply methodology for application in the electricity distribution industry. The NRS 058 provides a deeper level of detail to NERSA’s Cost of Supply Framework, and the two documents can therefore be used in conjunction.

This paper which was presented at the AMEU Conference 2019 explores the impact of some of the approved municipal SSEG tariffs on municipal revenue and customer ‘business case’ and outlines key tariff elements to balance access and cost recovery, until such time as detailed costing studies provide specific tariff building blocks (SEA, 2019).