LookSee, working with SANEDI, has made its free energy and carbon certification available to all South African homes with solar power.
The Energy and Carbon Performance Rating gives South Africans a clear view of their energy efficiency over the past 12 months.
This is done by analysing your inverter data over the period and comparing your home’s performance to other houses of a similar size and location.
The certification also considers factors like your electricity bills and even satellite imagery of your home.
LookSee then analyses this data in-depth, using complex formulas to determine your home’s energy efficiency.
It is important to note that this information is not shared with Eskom or any municipalities – it stays strictly with LookSee.
An example of the LookSee energy and Carbon Performance Rating is included, below.
Maximise your solar investment
LookSee’s certification is critical for South Africans who have invested in a solar system but are concerned they are not getting full value from it.
In challenging economic times, it is important that you don’t leave money on the table by using your expensive investment into solar sub-optimally.
An efficient home solar system uses more electricity from your panels, and less electricity from the grid – reducing your monthly electricity costs and giving you more money to handle your other expenses.
However, to understand how efficient your home is, you need to compare it with a benchmark of similar houses.
These houses must be in the same area as you – so they get similar access to sunlight – and must also be of a similar size.
If the certification finds that you are lagging behind these comparable houses, this shows you can still improve the efficiency of your current solar system and save more money.
Improve your home’s valuation
When you decide to sell your home, the LookSee Energy and Carbon Performance Rating is a valuable addition to your property listing.
Usually, when a property listing discloses that a house has a solar system, the scale of this system is often vague.
Does the system cover the entire house? Or is it only a small supplement to grid usage?
When you list your home and include its LookSee certification, you take this ambiguity out of the equation.
This standardised rating gives a clear picture of how effective your solar system is.
If you have a high efficiency rating from LookSee, this will add significant value to your home in the eyes of South African buyers.
Get your certificate
LookSee’s Energy and Carbon Certificate is an important resource for South African homeowners.
Here’s how it works:
- Email [email protected] to apply for your certificate.
- Provide your property details and read-only access to your inverter data (meaning LookSee cannot edit this data or change your system setup at all)
- LookSee runs your data through its established benchmarks and gives your home its ratings.
- The certificate is sent to you.
All of this is done without sharing any of your data with Eskom or municipalities, as the programme is not linked to SSEG registration initiatives.
The programme was previously available to a small testing group of South African homes who had a solar system from LookSee, and this pilot revealed some interesting insights.
Over 93% of homes had an energy performance of either A or B.
This demonstrated that energy efficiency is strong overall – but there is meaningful room for improvement by improving your B-rated house into an A-rated home.
Furthermore, the pilot programme found that solar users were more efficient and sparing with their electricity than the greater population.
The average energy consumption per square metre in the pilot was 32.1kWh/sqm/year, whereas the national benchmark typically ranges from 85-100kWh/sqm/year dependent on geographic location.
Across the homeowners who participated in the pilot, the programme established an average estimated savings of about R225,840 over 10 years.
