Eskom has indefinitely waived registration-related charges for qualifying household solar installations of up to 50kVA, but a dispute over whether homeowners should have to register their systems at all remains ongoing.

Claiming credit for having pressed for this, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) welcomed the move, saying households that have spent their own money on solar power should not face additional financial and administrative barriers.

But the organisation says Eskom has addressed only the cost of registration, not the underlying question of why registration should be compulsory for certain residential systems.

Eskom continues to require customer-owned generation to be registered. OUTA disputes the need for this where a solar installation operates entirely behind the customer’s meter, does not export electricity to the grid, and has been installed and certified as electrically compliant.

OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage said the utility should explain both the legal basis for compulsory registration and the practical problem the requirement is intended to solve.

The organisation argues that a valid electrical Certificate of Compliance should be sufficient to establish that a non-exporting household installation meets the necessary safety requirements.

It concedes, though, that the circumstances are different when homeowners want to send surplus electricity into Eskom’s network.

OUTA accepts that customers exporting power should obtain the necessary approvals and use appropriate metering and connection arrangements. Feeding electricity into the distribution network raises separate issues involving tariffs, compensation, metering, and network management.

It also questions whether compulsory registration is necessary to establish the amount of rooftop solar capacity in the country, pointing out that Eskom and the wider electricity sector already produce estimates despite many systems remaining unregistered.

For OUTA, the fee waiver is therefore only part of the story.

The organisation says it will continue pressing Eskom on the justification for compulsory registration of small, non-exporting household systems.

Customers who opt to register are meanwhile advised to establish the possible implications beforehand, including any changes to tariffs, deposits, or other costs.

Household and business solar generation stand as one of the seminal achievements of citizen self-help and stateproofing in South Africa, a response to the inability of the public sector to maintain the conditions of modern life. It is also a concrete demonstration of the resilience of South Africa’s middle class and an optimistic indication of its ability to deal with similar challenges in future.