CleanVolts Guides

Load Shifting: Get More From the Solar You Already Own

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:59:02 GMT

Your panels do most of their work between about ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. Most Joburg households use most of their electricity before eight and after five. The system sits on the roof making power while the house is empty, then the house comes home and buys power from City Power.

SSEG Registration in Johannesburg: What It Costs

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:45:00 GMT

If your solar system is connected to your house and your house is connected to City Power, City Power wants to know about it. The process is called SSEG registration, short for small-scale embedded generation.

Solar Battery Lifespan and Replacement Costs

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:28:48 GMT

If you're like most solar owners in Johannesburg, your battery went in during 2022 or 2023 to get you through load shedding. For its first couple of years it worked a few evenings a week, then sat full and waited for the next outage.

Is Your Solar System Underperforming? How to Check

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:11:52 GMT

Most solar systems in Johannesburg are never measured against anything. The app shows a number every day, the number looks reasonable, and nobody asks whether it should be bigger.

Solar Certificate of Compliance: What It Does and Doesn't Mean

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:12:22 GMT

Most people think about a Certificate of Compliance twice: when the installer hands one over, and when an estate agent asks for one.

Your Legal Duty as a Solar System Owner in SA

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:05:29 GMT

When you bought your solar system, you probably thought of it as a product. You paid, someone installed it, and the job was done.

Load Shedding Stopped. What Is Your Solar System For Now?

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:49:26 GMT

If you put solar on your roof in 2022 or 2023, you almost certainly did it for one reason: to keep the lights on when Eskom switched them off.

Then the load shedding stopped. The last round was in May 2025, and South Africa has now gone more than 16 months without it. For a lot of Johannesburg homeowners, that has turned a system that felt essential into one that feels like an expensive box on the wall.

Update: one week after we got solar installed

tony@cleanvolts.co.za (Tony Lopes) — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 14:37:07 GMT

EDIT: This post was originally posted on 2 October, 2022. It was shared by renowned journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, and that changed my life. For that I am forever grateful.