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Municipalities are scamming electricity users, especially businesses, says one businessman, who compiled a comparison of the costs of using electricity in various districts in South Africa.
The comparison, published in City Press, shows that a company that buys electricity in the city of Johannesburg will end up paying 1.71 rand per kilowatt hour (kWh), while buying power from neighboring Ekurhuleni would be much cheaper at 1.43 rand per kWh. .
However, if a company bought directly from Eskom, it would only pay R 1.16 per kWh.
The cheapest municipality was Nelson Mandela Bay at R1.03 per kWh. The city of Cape Town charges R1.39 per kWh (or R1.17 with the investment incentive) and Durban charges R1.26 per kWh.
The businessman said that given the wide differences in tariff prices between municipalities, it was evident that they are scamming consumers and ignoring the guidelines set by the South African National Energy Regulator (Nersa) to determine these prices.
Economist Mike Schussler noted that over the past decade, electricity prices have grown at twice the rate of inflation, while Afriforum has called on Nersa to better regulate the environment and ensure that price increases are motivated.
Eskom recently submitted a request for an additional R5.4 billion fee increase to Nersa, seeking to recoup the lost revenue. This exceeds the 27 billion rand that he had previously requested.
Together, these apps could cause rates to increase by as much as 15%.
Earlier, Nersa had truncated Eskom’s request for higher tariffs, saying that the company’s ransom for 69 billion rand over the next three years should be a factor in the equation.
However, Eskom challenged this in court and won. Nersa has now been forced to correct the amount that the power company can recover.
Read: South Africa to tender 12,000 MW of new independent electricity sources, including wind, solar and gas
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