Cape Town’s has opened up applications for residents to sell excess PV or SSEG power back to the city’s grid in its “Cash for Power” plan.

Previously, customers were required to buy more power from the grid than they fed back into it. The city has now lifted this restriction and will start accepting excess generation from customers.

“Most of the electricity generated by a grid-tied feed-in SSEG system (such as solar PV) is consumed onsite. Sometimes, the system will generate more electricity than the customer can consume. You can feed that excess generation back into the City’s grid and we will credit you at the SSEG Feed-in tariff rate,” City of Cape Town says.

The city will exchange the excess power for credit, which participants can use to pay their municipal accounts. After a municipal account has been settled, credit will accumulate until it reaches R1 000 for residential entities or R5 000 for commercial entities. The city will then pay customers out.

Customers must have a grid-tied solar PV system with a city-approved inverter in order to be eligible to apply