Size your system by farm type — house, borehole, cold storage or full operation. Compare it against Eskom's real fixed connection costs before you decide. Updated 2026.
Most farm solar research starts and ends with a usage question: "how many kWh do I use, and what does solar cost to replace that?" For a suburban home, that framing is close enough. For a farm — especially one with a remote dwelling, an isolated borehole, or an outbuilding some distance from the main connection — it misses the bigger number entirely: the fixed cost of simply being connected to the grid at all.
A typical Ruraflex-style farm connection in the 25–30 kVA range carries several fixed components regardless of how much power you actually draw: a service charge, an admin charge, a network capacity charge tied to your connection size, a demand charge based on your maximum draw, and — newer from 2025 onward — a generation capacity charge. Added together, these commonly land in the region of R5,000–R7,000 a month. That is R60,000–R85,000 a year before a single kWh has been used.
The trend is moving in one direction. The service portion of Eskom bills has been shifting from roughly a third of the total bill toward around two-thirds over a three-year period, which means using less electricity does not necessarily bring a proportional drop in what you pay. For a remote borehole, an isolated dwelling, or a distant outbuilding, the honest question worth asking is simple: are you paying R70,000 a year just for the option of grid power you barely use? If the answer is yes, off-grid solar is very likely to cost less over any horizon beyond about five years — and the calculator above builds this comparison into your results automatically.
Once a farm decides to solarise its borehole, the next real decision isn't panel brand or inverter size — it's whether to run the pump directly off solar panels into a storage tank, or to route power through a battery bank so the pump can run on demand at any hour. The two approaches suit different situations, and getting this choice right has a bigger effect on total cost than almost anything else in the system.
Direct-drive plus an adequately sized tank is the smarter investment — it avoids paying for battery capacity that a tank can provide for a fraction of the cost. Use Step 4 of the calculator to size your tank and pump together.
Centre-pivot and drip irrigation tend to run hardest during daylight hours — which happens to be exactly when solar produces the most. That overlap means even a partial solar contribution can offset a meaningful share of a season's pumping cost, but full commercial coverage for a centre-pivot system is a different engineering exercise from sizing a farmhouse or borehole system, and it deserves a dedicated design from a specialist rather than a planning-level calculator.
The right answer depends less on ideology and more on three questions: how far are you from an existing connection, how large are your fixed charges likely to be, and how much does downtime actually cost you? A farmhouse a few metres from an existing pole with light usage may do fine staying grid-connected. A remote borehole, an isolated cold room, or a new outbuilding some distance from the network is where the maths tends to swing hard toward off-grid, because you avoid both the connection installation cost and the ongoing fixed charges entirely.
Hybrid systems sit in between: for farms that are already grid-connected and simply want backup against load shedding or supply interruptions, keeping the grid connection while adding solar and a moderate battery bank is often more cost-effective than a full off-grid rebuild. Use your answer in Step 2 of the calculator above — it changes which comparison numbers we show you.
If a new grid connection or ongoing fixed charges would exceed roughly 60–70% of what an equivalent off-grid system costs over 10 years, off-grid is very likely the better long-term investment — even before counting the load shedding resilience it also buys you.
Planning-level ranges — your calculator result above will be more specific to your actual loads.
| Farm Type | System Size | Key Loads | Est. Cost (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farmhouse only | 3–8kW | Household basics | R80,000–R150,000 |
| + Borehole pump | 8–15kW | + Water pumping | R150,000–R250,000 |
| + Cold storage | 15–30kW | + Refrigeration | R250,000–R420,000 |
| Dairy operation | 20–40kW | + Milking, cleaning | R320,000–R600,000 |
| Game lodge | 15–40kW | + Guest amenities | R250,000–R600,000 |
| Full commercial | 50kW+ | Everything | Custom quote needed |
Running grid cable into a wildlife area is expensive, ecologically disruptive, and works against the exact experience guests are paying for. That's before counting the practical case: remote locations make grid extension costly, and reliability becomes critical the moment guest comfort is on the line.
There's an aesthetic and experiential argument too. No power lines cutting across a wilderness view. No generator noise breaking the quiet during a sundowner. A well-designed off-grid system can power everything from refrigeration and lighting to air conditioning and water pumps — silently, without visual or audio disruption to the guest experience, and in a way that aligns naturally with an eco-tourism brand.
These are broad planning averages, not a substitute for a site-specific assessment — shading, altitude and season all shift the real number.
Registered farming businesses may qualify for accelerated depreciation allowances on renewable energy equipment under South African tax law, which can materially improve the payback picture calculated above. Exact eligibility and the applicable rate depend on your business structure and the equipment installed, so this is worth confirming with a registered tax practitioner or accountant rather than relying on a general planning estimate — but it's a real factor to bring into the conversation before finalising a system size.