Municipality price rises – what can you do?

Following on from our article in March on the Eskom price increases and how you can at least delay your price rise, we thought it might make sense to give you a bit more warning about the municipality price rises in July.

The headlines are – pretty much everyone is getting an 6-8% price rise.

That is, unless you’re a high user – say over 1000kWh/month – or around R1,500 to R2,000 per month. If so, you might be stung by a very large bill. For example, in Ekurhuleni someone using 1000 credits per month will see their bill go from R1,443 to R2,104. Jeepers! There’s a less extreme example in Joburg, with City Power increasing the tariffs for high-users more than low users – e.g. someone spending R250/month will only see a price rise of 6.5% – or R17; in contrast an admittedly very high user at R5,000/month will see a 9% price rise to R5,550.

All the figures above are from our spreadsheet. It’s in ‘draft’ mode now as municipalities can still change their mind. Feel free to have a play with it and let us know if you’d like to use to add your municipality.

As always there’s three things you can do with rising prices:

1. Move somewhere cheaper 🙂 — Cape Town has the highest prices, and they live right next door to some people directly attached to Eskom. As you can see above, a household using 1000kwh/month pays City of Cape Town almost R1,550, but the same house connected to Eskom would only pay R1,130. Saving R400 each and every month.

2. Cut your usage. We think the best way to start on an energy-saving journey is with a Homebug – it will spot where you’re wasting energy and give you advice — Some people think Solar Water Heaters, LED lights, geyser blankets are easy-wins — with a Homebug you’ll be sure those investments will work for you, not just the sales-man!

3. Make sure you aren’t overbuying credits in one month. The inclining block means that just buying on the wrong day can mean you pay 70% more for your electricity. Put simply don’t buy loads of credit on the last few days of the month… It all depends on how/when you last bought credit, what tariff you’re on etc… We’re trying to make that easier too – so keep track of our blog for more info!