Why We Built Prepaid24 Energy

Ben Lindeque, Co-Founder and -CEO of Prepaid24

For seventeen years, Prepaid24 has sat at a particular vantage point: the point where tens of thousands of South African households buy their electricity, every single month. That's not a claim we make lightly, and it's not one we're used to talking about publicly. But it's the reason Prepaid24 Energy exists, and it deserves a proper explanation.

The view from inside

You only really notice electricity when something goes wrong. A token doesn't arrive. A meter runs out at the worst possible time. That's been our job for seventeen years, to make sure those moments don't happen, so that electricity can remain quietly in the background of a household's life, where it belongs.

But sitting where we sit also means we see things a normal solar company never would. We see how much a family actually spends on electricity in a year. We see that number climb, year after year, regardless of how carefully a household budgets. We see the strain that this puts on ordinary people, and we see that strain only getting worse.

The problem, named honestly

Electricity in South Africa keeps getting more expensive, and unfortunately nothing suggests that will change. Load shedding and general reliability, too, remains a reality that residents can't simply plan away.

Solar is the obvious answer, and most people already know it. What they don't have is a way to act on it. Solar used to be something only large industrial users, like factories and mines, could justify. Over the last decade, rooftop solar has become common in South African homes, but for most households it still isn't truly within reach. The upfront capital required puts it out of the very hands that need it most.

So the people who could benefit most from protection against rising electricity costs are, more often than not, the people least able to afford the entry point. That's the need Prepaid24 Energy wants to address.

Why Prepaid24, of all companies?

It's a fair question. Why would an electricity payments company get into solar?

We're not a solar provider that stumbled onto some clients. We're a company that has served South African households for seventeen years, that understands their electricity spend better than almost anyone and that necessarily asked ourselves a simple question, “Could the trust and the knowledge we've built up be used to help people spend less on electricity, not just make their purchases easier?”

Since 2009, our goal has been to help you top up your electricity in the most effortless way possible. And we're getting closer to achieving that every year. But, something else has been nagging at us for almost as long: how can we make your electricity more affordable and reliable? To answer that, we created Prepaid24 Energy.

What Prepaid24 Energy actually is

In plain terms: solar on the roof, with battery storage where it makes sense, for no upfront capital required. Instead of an electricity bill that only continues to climb every year, residents can now pay one fixed monthly amount and save from Day 1. The home stays connected to the grid throughout, so nobody is ever left without power. And if something breaks, it's repaired or replaced at NO extra cost to the resident.

The physical installation and ongoing maintenance are handled by carefully chosen installation and maintenance partners, fully vetted by Prepaid24. We made sure we would recommend this solution to our families before recommending them to a single client.

Why a rental model?

We looked at all the alternatives properly before choosing the rental one.

Buying a system outright means paying the full cost before it saves you a cent, and carrying all the maintenance risk yourself for its lifetime. This option also locks you into a single generation of technology, making future upgrades difficult. While this is a legitimate option for households with spare capital and who want to own the asset, it isn't what most people are looking for.

Rent-to-own lowers the entry cost, but still asks for a deposit, locks a household into a fixed term, and usually leaves maintenance with the client anyway. This route also makes it harder to upgrade when newer technology arrives.

A monthly rental removes all three problems at once: no capital outlay, no maintenance risk, and a subscription that can flex as circumstances change. For most households, this is the option with the least risk and the earliest saving.

Choosing the monthly rental is the conclusion we reached after comparing each available route properly, and this is a comparison we would highly recommend every resident to make for themselves.

What doesn't change

Nothing about a resident's relationship with Prepaid24 changes, as it pertains to purchasing prepaid electricity. While households will need considerably less prepaid electricity (this is obviously a good thing), they can still buy their tokens the same way they always have, through the same company South Africans have trusted for seventeen years. Prepaid24 Energy is an addition to that relationship, not a replacement for it.

Where to from here

If solar for your own home is something you'd like to explore, there's a short, no-obligation way to find the right system and see what it would cost (and save you): the Prepaid24 Energy Electricity Optimiser.

No pressure. We'll be here when you're ready.

Explore the Prepaid24 Energy Electricity Optimiser

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