Tshwane electricity tariffs 2026/27: what businesses pay

Which tariff is your business on?

This page covers the three main tariffs that apply to businesses in the City of Tshwane, from Pretoria and Centurion to the Rosslyn industrial belt and the wider metro. Residential tariffs, resellers, agricultural scales and the 132 kV class are out of scope, and so are sites that buy directly from Eskom (the name on your electricity invoice tells you which you are). The supply voltage and average load decide the tariff, and the tariff decides what solar can and cannot save. At a glance:

Rates rounded to cents; exact figures in the tariff tables below. †The 11 kV fixed charge is levied per metering point: a site with two metering points pays it twice. Non-time-of-use variants of the demand scales also exist (flat energy R2.4887/kWh at LV, R2.3445/kWh at 11 kV).

1. Small business (up to 150 A)

The non-domestic conventional and prepaid scales: single-phase or three-phase connections up to 150 A. Energy is one flat rate all year, with no seasons and no time-of-use; the fixed monthly charge is set by the number of phases and the amperage band, and it is substantial.

Intermediate three-phase amperage bands (61–125 A) carry fixed charges between the two shown. Prepaid variants run slightly lower fixed charges at the same energy rate.

2. Low-voltage time-of-use demand scale

For three-phase low-voltage premises with an annual average metered load above 50 kVA (a breaker larger than 80 A, up to 800 A). Energy is time-of-use by season and period, plus a demand charge on the half-hourly maximum in any period, plus a fixed monthly charge.

How demand is billed on this tariff. The half-hourly maximum of the month, in any period including off-peak, with a minimum billed demand of 30 kVA. When readings are unavailable, the city bills 60% of the highest demand of the preceding three months. There is no standing floor like City Power’s 80%-of-history rule: with working metering, a quiet month is billed on its own maximum.

3. 11 kV time-of-use scale

For premises supplied at 11 kV (the 11 kV scales serve average loads above 200 kVA). The structure matches the LV scale at lower energy rates, with two differences that matter: the fixed charge is levied per metering point, and the minimum billed demand is 140 kVA.

How demand is billed on this tariff. As on the LV scale: the month’s own half-hourly maximum in any period, floored at 140 kVA, with a readings-unavailable fallback of 70% of the highest of the preceding three months. A site whose peaks sit below 140 kVA pays the floor regardless, which makes right-sizing the supply agreement part of the energy conversation.

When are Tshwane’s peak hours?

Three things follow. First, winter peak exposure in Tshwane is concentrated at 06:00 to 08:00 and 17:00 to 20:00, mostly outside solar hours: managing it is a storage and load question. Second, the summer clock is generous to solar: the 07:00 to 09:00 peak and the whole standard day sit inside generation hours, nine months of the year. Third, the holiday rule cuts the other way from its neighbours: public holidays keep weekday pricing, so a system generating on a holiday earns full weekday value.

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. Tshwane bills the month’s single highest half-hour in any period, including evenings and the pre-dawn winter peak, so the benefit only exists while solar happens to be generating at that exact moment; one cloudy afternoon or a tripped system restores the full peak. The 30 kVA and 140 kVA minimums also cap how far the line can fall. Across our operating fleet solar typically reduces billed demand by around 10%, with a site-to-site range of roughly 5 to 25%, and our rule in feasibility work is firm: never count demand reduction in the business case. Where the demand line is the target, peak shaving with batteries and load management reaches peaks solar cannot, sized from your half-hourly interval data.

Power factor: no reactive charge in Tshwane

Unlike City Power and Ekurhuleni, no Tshwane business scale bills reactive energy: there is no kVArh line to appear after a solar installation. The supply by-laws still oblige a customer to correct a poor power factor, and it still matters indirectly, because demand is billed in kVA: reactive power inflates the kVA your site registers, and a modern inverter, correctly installed, configured and programmed, compensates reactive energy and can trim the demand line from the ratio side. That is a commissioning setting, not an accessory purchase.

What solar does not change

The fixed monthly charges, the largest of Gauteng’s three metro utilities (R19,055.98 on the LV scale, R27,226.11 per metering point at 11 kV), the demand minimums, and any peak set outside generation hours. Tshwane levies no network surcharge and no percentage account surcharge, so everything billed per kWh moves fully with solar. An honest proposal models your interval data against these exact rates rather than quoting a percentage saving.

Can you sell power back to Tshwane?

On paper, yes: the book publishes an export credit of about 94c/kWh for excess energy transferred to the grid by a registered embedded generator, and non-domestic customers stay on their normal tariff with no extra availability charge. But the credit applies, in the schedule’s own words, only after approval by the City of Tshwane, and in our experience that approval and follow-through rarely materialises for commercial sites.

Our advice is the same as across the province: never build a business case on export revenue. Assume exported energy is worth zero until the city has demonstrated otherwise on your own account, and design for self-consumption first, where the saving is real, measurable and under your control.

How much do Tshwane tariffs increase each year?

Tshwane is the most predictable biller in Gauteng: it moves every line of the book by one flat percentage. 10.20% in 2025/26, 8.80% in 2026/27, applied identically to energy, demand and fixed charges. The panels track the 11 kV time-of-use scale across the last three books.

2024/25 and 2025/26 are gazetted figures; 2026/27 is the gazetted 2025/26 book escalated by the promulgated 8.80% increase (see the sources note). Because the increase is flat, every line shows the same cumulative change.

What that means for a solar decision. Nearly 20% in two years, compounding on every line, and because the whole book moves together, the mix never rescues you: fixed, demand and energy all climb in step. Every year of delay reprices the daytime energy a system would have served by roughly 9 to 10% more, and a case modelled on your own interval data against these rates simply improves each July.

Common questions