A tax rebate on photo voltaic panels, launched within the 2024 tax yr however then eliminated, shouldn’t have been scrapped and, certainly, ought to be reintroduced and expanded.
That is the view of Andrew Middleton, CEO of GoSolr, a photo voltaic set up firm that on Tuesday revealed its newest quarterly replace, the third it’s produced, on the photo voltaic business in South Africa.
The photo voltaic rebate – which was just for photo voltaic panels – ought to “completely have been prolonged”, Middleton instructed TechCentral. Not solely that, but when South Africa is severe about mitigating the consequences of local weather change and fixing the vitality provide disaster, it ought to broaden the programme to incorporate inverters and batteries, that are additionally required in most photo voltaic initiatives, he stated.
The rebate on photo voltaic panels – 25% of the fee, as much as a most of R15 000 – was “actually restricted”. To get the total rebate, customers needed to have a really massive photo voltaic set up of at the very least 3 times the common mission dimension.
Regardless of the restricted scope of the rebate – and although Middleton believes it ought to have included “all the stack of parts” utilized in residence photo voltaic installations – he’s “dissatisfied” authorities ended it.
Worse, the rebate was changed with an import tariff on photo voltaic panels designed to encourage the native manufacture of the panels.
“Sure, there’s a native business [making panels], nevertheless it’s very uncompetitive and nowhere close to the pricing you will get from imports,” Middleton stated.
Going photo voltaic
Consequently, the elevated costs of imported panels have merely pushed up the price of going photo voltaic for householders. Authorities is successfully penalising folks for selecting to go photo voltaic, he stated. And although Eskom hasn’t imposed load shedding since March, it continues to burn costly diesel (albeit at a slower fee than a yr in the past) in its open-cycle gasoline generators to maintain the lights on, particularly throughout throughout peak demand hours.
Middleton stated the photo voltaic set up business is on observe for its second-best yr ever, though it’ll nonetheless be sharply down from 2023’s bumper yr when load shedding was at its peak.
Learn: Owners are nonetheless going photo voltaic – however for various causes
Citing figures from Eskom, GoSolr stated in its newest quarterly report that 749MW of rooftop photo voltaic capability has been put in this yr, taking the overall to five.9GW. Some 162MW of recent rooftop photo voltaic was added within the third quarter, down 267MW from the identical three months in 2023. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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