City Power electricity tariffs 2026/27: what Johannesburg businesses pay

Which tariff is your business on?

This page covers the three main tariffs that apply to businesses in Johannesburg. City Power’s licensed area takes in most of the city’s commercial nodes, from Sandton and Randburg to Midrand, Roodepoort and the southern industrial areas. Residential tariffs and the niche classes (resellers, agriculture) are out of scope, and so are the sites that buy directly from Eskom rather than City Power (the name on your electricity invoice tells you which you are). The supply capacity of your connection decides which of the three you are on, and the tariff decides what solar can and cannot save. At a glance:

Rates rounded to cents for comparison; the exact schedule figures are in the tariff tables below. The demand charges are the same rate year-round, and the two Large Power User demand rates really are six cents apart in the approved schedule.

1. Business (up to 100 kVA)

For shops, restaurants, offices and small workshops on a standard 400 V connection of up to 100 kVA, metered prepaid or conventional. Energy is billed on a five-step block ladder that climbs with your cumulative monthly consumption: the more you use in the month, the higher the rate on the next kWh. There is no demand charge.

A commercial account using more than 3,000 kWh a month, which is most of them, pays the top rate on every additional kWh. There is no demand billing on this tariff, so the floor rules below do not apply here.

2. Large Power User: demand tariff

The approved schedule’s qualification criteria for Large Power Users: low voltage from 70 kVA to 1,000 kVA at 400 V, medium voltage from 800 kVA and above at 11,000/6,600 V. Low-voltage rates are shown. Energy is a flat rate that changes only by season, plus a demand charge on the highest half-hour of the month, plus fixed charges. This is the “three-part tariff”: energy, demand, fixed.

How demand is billed on this tariff. The billed kVA is not simply what you measured. The approved schedule bills the greatest of three figures: the actual measured maximum demand, 70 kVA, and 80% of the average of the three highest demands recorded over the rolling preceding twelve months. In a quiet month you can therefore be billed above your actual measured demand, and one high winter half-hour keeps a floor under this line for the next year.

3. Large Power User: time-of-use (on application)

The same Large Power User qualification criteria apply (low voltage 70 kVA to 1,000 kVA at 400 V), with time-of-use metering, on application and after approval. Energy is priced by period (peak, standard, off-peak) and season, on top of the same demand-charge structure. For most sites with daytime load it is the cheapest of the three per kWh, and it is the tariff where solar changes the bill most.

A winter peak kWh costs 3.8 times a winter off-peak kWh. Winter peak is also 2.4 times summer peak: the three winter months carry rates the other nine do not. Note the demand rate here is R461.28/kVA against the demand tariff’s R461.22: six cents apart in the approved schedule, quoted as published.

How demand is billed on this tariff. The same minimum-demand determination as the demand tariff: the billed kVA is the greatest of the actual measured maximum demand, 70 kVA, and 80% of the average of the three highest demands over the rolling preceding twelve months. A quiet month can be billed above what the meter measured.

When are City Power’s peak hours?

Three things about this clock are worth knowing because they are not what people assume. First, the windows never change: City Power runs the same clock in January and July, and only the rates switch with the season. (Eskom and Ekurhuleni move their clock windows seasonally; City Power does not.) Second, every public holiday is billed as a Saturday, which has no peak period at all. Third, the morning peak runs to 10:00, so a solar system is already generating through the last two hours or so of the most expensive window of the day, while the evening peak at 18:00–20:00 falls mostly after generation.

Solar and the rest of the bill

What solar does to each tariff’s energy lines is under that tariff above. Three questions cut across all of them: demand, power factor, and what stays.

Does solar reduce my demand charges?

Sometimes, and never dependably. The demand line is set by the month’s single highest half-hour, so the benefit only exists while solar happens to be generating at that exact moment. One cloudy afternoon, or a system that trips at the wrong time, restores the full peak: a month’s demand saving can disappear in thirty minutes. The billing floor described under each tariff above (the 80%-of-history rule) then holds the line up for a year.

What we measure across our operating fleet: solar typically reduces billed demand by around 10%, with a site-to-site range of roughly 5 to 25%. Because the figure varies that much, our rule in feasibility work is firm: never count demand reduction in the business case. Model the energy savings, and treat any demand reduction as upside. Where the demand line itself is the target, peak shaving with batteries and load management reaches peaks solar cannot, sized from your half-hourly interval data.

Power factor: solar shifts the ratio, and the inverter can correct it

City Power bills reactive energy when power factor is below 0.96: every kVArh in excess of 30% of the month’s kWh is charged at 46.25c/kVArh. Solar reduces the kWh City Power supplies but not the reactive power your machines draw, so the ratio worsens as the solar share grows, and a site that never saw a reactive charge can start incurring one after commissioning.

The equipment that causes this can also cure it. Modern solar inverters are capable of compensating reactive energy, and a system that is correctly installed, configured and programmed should leave your power factor better than it found it, not worse. A reactive charge appearing after commissioning is therefore a configuration question for the installer before it is a reason to buy separate correction equipment. It should be checked at commissioning against metered kVArh, not discovered on the first bill.

What solar does not change

The fixed service and capacity charges remain whatever solar does, and demand set outside generation hours is untouched. Everything billed per kWh moves with solar: each solar kWh removes its energy rate, its 6c/kWh network surcharge, and its share of the 2% account surcharge, proportionally. The fixed lines are a growing share of the bill (see the trend below), which is exactly why an honest solar proposal models your interval data against your actual tariff rather than quoting a percentage saving.

How much do City Power tariffs increase each year?

Three years of approved schedules tell a consistent story. The panels below track the large-user time-of-use lines across the last four tariff books.

Large Power User time-of-use, low voltage, ex VAT. Bar labels rounded for space; the exact schedule figures per year are in the table below and in the tariff tables above.

The level: roughly 12% a year, compounding. Between 2023/24 and 2026/27 the time-of-use energy rates and the demand charge rose 37.8%, and the fixed charges rose 41.1%. That is an average of around 11 to 12% a year, compounded, on the lines a Johannesburg business actually pays.

The mix: the unavoidable lines are rising fastest. The increases have not been even. In 2025/26 the fixed and demand lines jumped 18.3% and 17.9% while energy rose 10.3%; over the full three years the fixed charges outpaced energy. The fixed part of the bill, the one part neither behaviour nor solar can reduce, is growing as a share of the total. For 2026/27 every line moved by the same 9.01%.

Business-tariff energy blocks moved +13.1%, +13.3% and +9.0% over the same three years.

What that means for a solar decision. Two things follow. First, every year of delay reprices the energy a solar system would have served at roughly 9 to 15% more. Second, because the fixed and demand lines keep rising regardless, the honest case for solar is built on the lines it actually displaces, energy and surcharges, from your own interval data, not on a percentage of the total bill. Both effects push the same way: measured properly, the case improves every July.

Can you sell power back to City Power?

A grid-tied system can be configured to export surplus energy, and City Power’s approved schedule does publish embedded-generator rates. Publication is not the same as payment. Exporting requires small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) registration, council approval and council action, and in our experience that approval and follow-through rarely materialises for commercial sites.

Our advice is blunt: never build a business case on export revenue. A client should assume the value of exported energy is zero until the council has demonstrated otherwise on their own account. Every system we design for Johannesburg is sized for self-consumption first, where the saving is real, measurable and under your control; any export value that ever arrives is a bonus, not a plan.

Common questions