Many South African businesses are billed on the wrong municipal tariff scale, and have been for years. We check yours in ten business days, manage the change with the municipality, and only get paid out of the saving we verify on your bill.
The school buys about 1.0 GWh a year. Its meters were on the municipality's flat single-rate scale at R4.73 per kWh excluding VAT. The connection had qualified for the time-of-use scale all along. Modelled saving: roughly a third of the annual bill, with no capital spend, no solar and no change to the supply.
Figures from the municipality's 2025/26 tariff book and twelve months of the customer's half-hourly data. The demand charge basis is subject to written confirmation by the municipality; the saving is positive on every basis tested.
Municipalities put medium business connections on a single-rate scale when the account is opened. Moving to time of use is the customer's job, and nobody tells the customer.
Breakers get upgraded, tenants change, a second building is added. The physical connection now qualifies for a better scale; the account was never re-classified.
Estimated readings, duplicate basic charges, dormant connections still attracting a fixed fee. Finance pays what arrives. It takes an engineer with the tariff book open to see what is wrong.
We model your actual load against every scale your connection qualifies for: single rate, multi rate, time of use, metered demand. A peak-light load on a flat scale is usually paying far too much.
Notified maximum demand, breaker settings, CT ratios and how the municipality actually measures kVA. Small facts that decide whether a demand charge costs R1.2m or R1.5m a year.
Multiple connections on one site, each carrying its own basic charge. Meters that are estimated month after month. On one Cape Town property portfolio these alone came to about R200,000 a year.
Plus a photograph of your main breaker and meter. That is all we need to start.
Against the municipality's published tariff book, scale by scale, using your interval data where it exists.
What you pay now, what you would pay on the right scale, what it takes to move, and every assumption we made.
Forms, meter checks, demand history requests, follow-up with the municipality. You sign; we chase.
We verify it against the new statement. Our fee is calculated on what is verified, nothing else.
Typically a main breaker above 300 amps (about 200 kVA) and an annual bill above R1 million. Loads that are light at peak times, such as weekday-only or daytime-only operations, gain the most.
We review accounts in Nelson Mandela Bay and Cape Town today, and will quote for any municipality that publishes its tariff book. Eskom-supplied sites are handled case by case.
Earth & Wire is an energy platform, not a consultancy that lives off audits. We do this because a correctly classified account is the starting point for everything else we offer, including wheeled renewable supply at a lower rate than the municipality charges.
Take the last twelve months of bills. Add up the kWh and the total charges excluding VAT. Enter both.
A blended rate is a rough guide only. On a municipal medium business supply, a blended rate well above the municipality's time-of-use average usually means a single-rate scale. Send the bills and we will tell you properly.
Fill this in and your email client will open with the details ready to send to info@earthandwire.com. Attach the bills and a photo of the main breaker if you have one to hand; if not, we will ask.