Eskom Distribution announced on Tuesday that the deadline for registering residential low-voltage solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage (BES) systems has been moved to 30 September 2026. The utility also said it will no longer levy fines or require a costly professional sign-off for the registration. However, Eskom warned it retains the right to cut electricity supply to any installation it judges to be unsafe.
The change follows weeks of pressure from the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) and other civil-society groups. OUTA’s submission to Eskom argues that the utility’s power-cut threat lacks a legal basis because a valid certificate of compliance (CoC), a document proving an installation meets the Electrical Installation Regulations (EIR) under the Occupational Health & Safety Act, should be sufficient proof of safety.
What the deadline means for small business owners
For owners of small enterprises that have installed rooftop solar to offset load-shedding and rising tariffs, the extended deadline offers a brief reprieve. The registration process, which previously carried the risk of fines for non-compliance, is now a paperwork exercise that must be completed by the end of September. The removal of the professional sign-off requirement reduces upfront costs, a welcome development for businesses operating on thin margins.
Nevertheless, the lingering threat of disconnection means that a valid CoC remains essential. The CoC is issued by a qualified electrician registered with the Department of Employment & Labour and confirms that the system complies with SANS 10142-1, the national safety standard for low-voltage electrical work. If Eskom decides to label an installation unsafe, it would first have to demonstrate that the CoC itself is invalid or was issued unlawfully, a burden OUTA says the utility is unlikely to meet.
Eskom’s justification for the registration regime has traditionally cited the Electricity Regulation Act (ERA), the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) and the South African Grid Code. OUTA points out that low-voltage residential systems under 100 kilowatts do not have a “Point of Connection” as defined in the Grid Code, meaning they fall outside the ERA and NERSA’s regulatory scope. Instead, the relevant legislation is the OHS Act and its EIR, overseen by the Chief Inspector of the Department of Employment & Labour.
The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) has confirmed that the voluntary technical specifications (NRS) produced by Eskom and municipal distributors do not fill any safety gap in SANS 10142-1. As a result, the legal argument that Eskom can enforce additional safety standards beyond the national code appears weak.
In practical terms, small business owners should ensure their solar or battery system has a current CoC, keep the documentation readily available, and monitor any further communications from Eskom. While the utility’s threat to cut power for “unsafe” installations remains on the table, the legal consensus presented by OUTA suggests that such an action would be difficult to enforce without clear evidence of non-compliance.
Why a registration requirement exists at all
The argument over paperwork makes more sense once you know what a distributor is actually worried about, and it is not the safety of the household that installed the system.
The first concern is the person working on the line. A grid-tied inverter that keeps energising a circuit after the supply has been cut turns a line a technician believes is dead into a live one. Every modern inverter is required to disconnect automatically when it loses the grid, a behaviour called anti-islanding, and the whole point of registration is to know which addresses have equipment capable of back-feeding so that a fault can be worked on with that knowledge rather than without it.
The second concern is planning. Distribution networks were designed on the assumption that power flows one way, from the substation outward, and that assumption is built into the sizing of transformers and the settings of protection equipment. Enough generation on one feeder can reverse that flow at midday, push voltage above its permitted band at the end of a line, and cause inverters to trip off in a cluster. None of that is visible to a distributor that does not know where the systems are, which is why registration is standard practice in most markets rather than a local peculiarity.
The third is commercial, and it is the one least often stated. Customers who generate their own power buy less, while the cost of maintaining the poles and wires that still serve them barely changes. That tension sits underneath a great many utility decisions about rooftop solar internationally, and it is worth naming plainly rather than pretending the dispute is purely technical.
The distinction between safe and permitted
The substance of the disagreement here is a jurisdictional one, and it is a useful thing for any business owner to be able to recognise, because it recurs across regulated industries.
Electrical safety in a building is governed by occupational health and safety law, administered through an inspection and certification regime, and evidenced by a certificate issued by a registered person. Connection to a distribution network is governed by a different body of law concerned with the grid rather than the premises. An installation can satisfy the first completely and still be the subject of a dispute under the second, because the two ask different questions.
That is why the argument turns on which framework applies rather than on whether anybody’s wiring is dangerous. When a body claims a power to act, the question is always which statute grants it and whether the thing being regulated falls inside that statute’s definitions. A specification issued by an industry body is not the same as a regulation made under an act, and voluntary technical standards do not generally acquire legal force merely by being published by the organisation that wants to rely on them.
What a business with a system on the roof should actually do
Register by the deadline, whatever view you take of the legal argument. Compliance is cheap now that the fee and the sign-off requirement are gone, and being in a dispute is expensive even when you are right.
Keep the compliance certificate somewhere it can be produced immediately rather than filed and forgotten. Note that these certificates have a currency: a certificate speaks to the installation as it was when it was issued, and adding panels, swapping an inverter or extending battery capacity is a change to the installation. Work done after the certificate was issued is the most common reason a document that looks valid turns out not to cover what is actually on the roof.
Keep the installer’s registration details with it. If the question ever becomes whether a certificate was validly issued, the answer depends on who issued it and whether they were registered to do so at the time.
And treat the interruption risk as an operational question rather than a legal one. A business that cannot trade without power should know what happens to its system when the grid supply stops, because that behaviour is a property of how the system was designed and not of who wins an argument about jurisdiction.
