Registering a solar installation: SSEG with the municipality or Eskom

Who you register with

Registration is with the network operator that supplies the property, not with a national body. In a municipality that distributes its own electricity, such as the City of Cape Town, Johannesburg or eThekwini, the application goes to the municipality. Where Eskom supplies the property directly, the application goes to Eskom. Each operator has its own form, its own approved inverter list and its own tariff for customers who generate, and the requirements differ.

The distinction between a grid-tied system, which can export or at least synchronise with the grid, and an off-grid or fully islanded system matters, because it is the grid connection that triggers registration.

What the application needs

Operators generally ask for the electrical certificate of compliance for the installation from a registered person, an inverter that appears on the operator's approved list and complies with NRS 097-2-1, the specification that governs how embedded generators connect to the low voltage network, a single-line diagram, the installer's details, and a commissioning report. Some require sign-off by a professional engineer or technologist above a size threshold, and some require a specific meter.

The PV GreenCard, administered through the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association, is an installer programme and an installation record that many operators and financiers recognise as evidence of a competent installation.

Why installers carry the paperwork

The homeowner is the applicant, but the installer produces almost every document in the file, and an application that stalls on a missing diagram or an inverter that is not on the list comes back to the installer months later. Keeping the complete file per site, with the certificate, the diagram, the inverter serial numbers and the commissioning photographs, is what lets the installer answer without a site visit.

Fees, tariffs and cut-off dates for registration change by operator and by year, and this page does not state them. Take the current figures from the operator's own page.

What Omni Field does about this

• The certificate of compliance, single-line diagram, inverter serials, commissioning report and photographs live on one job card per site, with the multi-day install tracked as one job. Multi-Phase Project Management
• The installer's registered-person status and PV GreenCard accreditation sit in the certification register with expiry alerts. Team Certification Management
• The installed system is recorded as an asset against the client with its own service history, so the annual inspection and any warranty visit find the file. Inventory & Asset Tracking