{"id":841469,"date":"2025-10-31T10:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=841469"},"modified":"2025-10-31T10:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:04:18","slug":"what-nersa-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-electricity-prices-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/841469\/what-nersa-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-electricity-prices-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"What NERSA doesn’t want you to know about electricity prices in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) has argued in court that municipal customers have no right to know what councils pay Eskom for electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil action organisation AfriForum challenged the approval of municipal electricity tariff hikes in court, arguing that submissions lacked proper cost-of-supply studies and sufficient public participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its application, AfriForum requests that the energy regulator\u2019s public participation process be declared invalid due to the lack of opportunities for the public to provide input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It further requested that the court issue an interdict to ensure specified timelines for future public participation processes, to which three municipalities agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNersa argued that cost studies do not need to be published with applications, as they are confidential,<\/strong> and that their technical nature ensures that only their expertise is sufficient to interpret them,\u201d AfriForum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This prompted Judge Etienne Labuschagne to question how the public could be expected to provide valuable contributions without the necessary information\u2014a question Nersa had no answer for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy expert Ruse Moleshe questioned the NERSA\u2019s stance that the public has no right to know how much municipalities pay Eskom for electricity before reselling it to residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn other words, NERSA is saying that the public would have no right to know how much profit the municipality makes when it on-sells that electricity to consumers,\u201d said Moleshe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moleshe noted that while there may be certain cases where information could justifiably be protected, South Africa\u2019s laws generally favour openness, but it depends on what type of information it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s proprietary information that could impact other players in the market from a competition point of view, there could be an argument that only sanitised or aggregated data is released,\u201d she explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut in general, South Africa is a consultative democracy\u2014that\u2019s enshrined in our Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t get too optimistic about electricity costs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She added that the legislative framework already places obligations on municipalities to be transparent about their operations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBarring areas where there\u2019s potential commercial sensitivity or competition-related issues, I would think councils have other duties to tell us anyway,\u201d said Moleshe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSurely, entities like City Power have to publish annual reports in Johannesburg, and from that, we should be able to see what their electricity costs are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moleshe noted that Eskom\u2019s own pricing processes are relatively transparent compared to municipalities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at Eskom\u2019s multi-year price determination process, it\u2019s quite clear how the formula is made and what information is considered,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, you wouldn\u2019t necessarily get the fine details of individual contracts, and that\u2019s why I say it depends on the specifics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said that the current debate around municipal electricity tariffs forms part of a broader reassessment of how tariffs are calculated in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a big study being carried out by Sedi on how tariffs are structured. The issue isn\u2019t just about having access to electricity and avoiding load shedding\u2014affordability has become the major problem,\u201d Moleshe explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite ongoing efforts to reform the sector, Moleshe expressed caution about expecting rapid changes to electricity costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not as optimistic as the minister and others are. That\u2019s because I\u2019m aware of the capital requirements for maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure we have\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnder South African law, it\u2019s a user-pays system. So while we might see some efficiencies and small cost reductions here and there, overall, I don\u2019t foresee a big bang impact on prices.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Energy regulator NERSA is in court arguing to keep information about municipal electricity prices secret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":837329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[20623,853],"class_list":["post-841469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-national-energy-regulator-of-south-africa-nersa","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841469"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841491,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841469\/revisions\/841491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}