Privacy Notice.

This notice explains how Earth & Wire collects, uses, shares and protects personal information collected through this website. It is issued in terms of section 18 of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

We have tried to write it in plain language. If anything is unclear, please contact us using the details in section 13 and we will explain it.

01Who we are

Earth & Wire is a division of DimSum Energy (Pty) Ltd, which is the responsible party for the personal information described in this notice.

02What we collect

We collect personal information directly from you, and only when you choose to give it to us.

When you complete the enquiry form

• Your name and the name of your company
• Your email address and, if you provide it, your telephone number
• The town or city where your site is located
• Who supplies your electricity, and your approximate monthly electricity spend
• Whether you wish to buy clean energy, sell surplus energy, or both
• If you generate, your plant size and whether you have battery storage
• Anything else you choose to write in the free-text field

Most of this is business information rather than personal information, but your name, email address and telephone number identify you personally and POPIA applies to them.

If you later send us an electricity bill

We do not collect bills through this website. If we ask for one during a conversation and you send it by email, that document and the consumption data in it are processed for the purpose of preparing your appraisal.

Automatically, when you visit

Our hosting provider records standard technical information for security and reliability, including your IP address, browser type and the pages requested. We do not use this to build a profile of you and we do not combine it with your enquiry.

03Why we collect it

• To respond to your enquiry and contact you about it
• To prepare an appraisal of what renewable supply, or your surplus generation, could look like for your business
• To match generators and buyers on the Earth & Wire network, if you decide to proceed
• To record your interest in early access to EnergyField supply
• To keep our own records of enquiries received and how they were handled
• To keep this website secure and working correctly

We rely on your consent, which you give by ticking the consent box on the enquiry form, and on our legitimate interest in responding to a business enquiry that you initiated. We do not sell your personal information to anyone, and we do not use it for advertising.

04Voluntary, and what happens if you decline

Giving us your information is entirely voluntary. There is no legal obligation on you to provide it and we are not required by any law to collect it.

The practical consequence of not providing it is simply that we cannot reply to you. Company name, your name and your email address are the minimum we need in order to make contact. The remaining fields are optional, and leaving them blank only means that the first appraisal we send you will be rougher than it could have been.

05Who we share it with

We do not sell or rent personal information. We share it only with the service providers who operate parts of our website and email on our behalf, and only to the extent that they need it. In POPIA terms these are our operators.

We may also disclose personal information where we are required to do so by law, by a court, or by a regulator, and to our professional advisers where necessary.

If you proceed beyond an enquiry, personal information may be shared with the counterparty to your proposed wheeling arrangement, with the relevant metering operator, and with your municipality or Eskom, as the wheeling process requires. We will explain exactly what is shared and why before that happens.

06Transfers outside South Africa

The service providers listed above are located outside South Africa and process information on servers outside South Africa. This means your personal information is transferred across the border.

We only use providers that are subject to data protection laws or binding contractual terms that give a level of protection substantially similar to the conditions for lawful processing under POPIA, as required by section 72. By ticking the consent box on the enquiry form you also consent to this transfer.

If you would prefer that your information is not transferred outside South Africa, please email us instead of using the form and we will deal with your enquiry accordingly.

07How long we keep it

• If your enquiry does not lead to a business relationship immediately, we keep it for five years from our last contact with you. The reason for that period is specific: enquiries include registrations of interest in early access to EnergyField supply, which is expected to come online in 2029 or 2030, and your place in that queue has to remain on record until then to be worth anything. If you would rather we did not hold it that long, tell us and we will delete it.
• If you become a customer or a generator on the network, we keep your information for the duration of the relationship and afterwards for as long as any law, contract or regulator requires.
• Technical website logs are kept only for as long as our hosting provider retains them for security purposes.

When information is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for, and we are not required to keep it, we delete or de-identify it.

08How we protect it

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, damage and unauthorised access, as POPIA requires.

• This website is served only over an encrypted HTTPS connection
• Enquiries are transmitted over an encrypted connection to our inbox
• Access to the enquiry inbox is limited to Earth & Wire personnel who need it
• We hold no customer database on this website. There is nothing stored here to breach

If personal information under our control is accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify the Information Regulator and you, as section 22 of POPIA requires.

09Cookies and tracking

Should we add analytics in future, we will update this notice before doing so and will ask for your consent where the law requires it.

10Your rights

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• Be told whether we hold personal information about you, and to be given a copy of it, in terms of section 23. We may charge a prescribed fee for this
• Correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or obtained unlawfully, in terms of section 24
• Object to our processing of your information on reasonable grounds, in terms of section 11(3)
• Withdraw your consent at any time. This does not affect processing that already took place while your consent was valid
• Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that has legal consequences for you. We make no such decisions
• Complain to the Information Regulator, as set out in section 11

To exercise any of these, email info@earthandwire.com. We will respond as soon as reasonably possible. Asking us to stop contacting you is the simplest request of all, and we will action it immediately.

11Complaints to the Regulator

We would prefer that you raise a concern with us first, so that we have the chance to put it right. You are, however, entitled to complain directly to the Information Regulator at any time.

12Changes to this notice

We may update this notice as our services develop or as the law changes. The version number and effective date at the top of this page will always tell you which version applies. Where a change materially affects how we use information you have already given us, we will contact you about it rather than rely on you noticing.

13Contact us

For anything relating to this notice, to your personal information, or to exercise any of the rights in section 10, contact our Information Officer: