South Africa’s rooftop solar boom outlived load shedding
There was an obvious way for the rooftop solar story to end. Load shedding stops, the panic buying stops, installers go back to quoting normal lead times, the market shrinks to whatever it was before. Load shedding did effectively end, in early 2024. The installing did not. Eskom’s estimate passed 8.3 GW in mid 2026, which is 215% above its first published figure from August 2022.
For scale, 8.3 GW on private roofs is more than every renewable independent power producer contracted to Eskom, combined. Nobody procured it and nobody planned it. It accumulated, one bakkie and one roof at a time.
The reason changed underneath the boom
The 2022 and 2023 waves were bought in the dark, in some cases literally by torchlight. What kept the sales going after the lights stayed on is the tariff. Eskom prices have climbed above inflation for years, another 12.74% in 2026, and at some point the household spreadsheet flips: the panels beat the grid even with zero blackouts. Industry body SAPVIA expects 3.5 to 4 GW of new capacity in 2026, which would be more than 2025 managed.
Nobody counted those panels
The part I find genuinely funny, as someone who works with data for a living: 8.3 GW is an inference, not a count. Most systems were never registered, so Eskom estimates the fleet from how national demand behaves when the sun comes out. The utility is measuring a shadow and publishing it to one decimal place.
The registration push is where it gets awkward. Eskom is waiving connection and registration fees until 30 September 2026, worth up to R10,000 for an urban customer and R36,000 rural. Registering also moves you onto the Homeflex tariff, whose fixed charges rose 88% this year. Waive the fee with one hand, raise the standing charge with the other, then wonder why the register stays thin.
So the honest reading of 8.3 GW is: at least that, probably more, nobody knows by how much. I will check back after September when the waiver lapses. Either the register starts catching up with the roofs, or the gap between the model and the country keeps widening. I know which way I would bet.