The City of Cape Town’s Electricity Services Department is a valuable link between South Africa’s electricity supplier (mainly Eskom) and the City’s consumers who buy and use electricity. To perform this function, it needs to construct and maintain the equipment that transforms the power supply so that it meets customers’ needs, supplies public lighting, and provides ancillary support services.
The City Council adopted the 2012/2013 municipal budget in May this year. It contained a number of increases for services offered by the City, including electricity, in order to ensure that the City can continue to deliver a quality service to its residents. Residents in Cape Town can expect to pay an average of 11% more for their domestic electricity use as from 1 July 2012.
There are two general use residential tariffs in the City, the Lifeline and Domestic tariffs. As of 1 July 2012, the structure of the two tariffs – but not necessarily the values – will be identical. This means that their functioning will also be identical.
To qualify for the Lifeline tariff (which includes free basic electricity allocations), a customer has to “receive” 450kWh (1kWh = 1 unit in common speak) or less per month, on average. This essentially means that over a 12 month period, a customer needs to “receive” less than 5 400kWh in total. Electricity that is consumed, purchased or obtained free of charge is all referred to as “received”. Those who receive more than this cut-off amount in a year (i.e. those who receive more than 450kWh per month on average) are placed on the Domestic tariff.
The first 150kWh received in any calendar month is charged at the Block 1 tariff rate. For Lifeline customers, there is a further subsidy with the City paying for 50kWh of that first 150kWh (so the customer only pays for 100kWh of the 150kWh).
The next 200kWh that is received (so 150,1 to 350kWh) is then charged at the Block 2 rate; the next 250kWh (350,1 to 600kWh) at the Block 3 rate; and anything that is received above the 600kWh mark is charged at the Block 4 rate.
Simply put, the price per kWh increases with each successive block. The more you receive the more you pay, and the higher your average cent per kWh becomes. It is therefore wise to save electricity because lower consumption means lower tariffs.
Prepayment electricity consumers seeking to minimise the amount spent on electricity each month should buy no more than the amount of electricity that they anticipate they will use in that month – because excess electricity will be charged at a higher rate.
There is a common misconception that if a customer moves from, for example, Block 3 to Block 4, they’ll have to purchase all of their electricity at the higher Block 4 rate – but this is not the case. Only the electricity purchased in that particular block costs more, and any electricity received from the lower blocks is charged at that lower rate.
Tariffs are as follows:
Lifeline (all values exclude VAT):
Domestic (all values exclude VAT):
