NERSA’s tariff determination for the 2026/27 financial year added 8,76 per cent to the cost of every kilowatt-hour direct Eskom customers buy. Municipal customers, whose financial year runs to a different cycle, see a 9,01 per cent increase from 1 July 2026. The percentage is the headline. What matters to your budget is the rand number, and the rand number depends on how much electricity your household actually pulls in a month, plus a structural change to Homepower tariffs that quietly moves more of every bill into fixed charges.
Here is what the new tariff costs you at three real-world consumption levels.
What the new tariff actually is
NERSA published its decision on 5 March 2026, with the new rates effective from 1 April 2026 for direct Eskom customers and 1 July 2026 for most municipal resellers, who run on a different financial year. The headline 8,76 per cent increase is the average Eskom retail tariff move. Municipal mark-ups, where applicable, add on top.
Two things move with a tariff decision: the per-unit kWh charge, and the fixed monthly charges (the network access, capacity, and service charges). The 2026/27 decision changed both, and it changed something more structural on top: from 1 April 2026, inclining-block tariffs on Eskom Homepower and Homelight residential tariffs have been removed. Every kWh is now priced at a single rate per tariff, instead of stepping up after the 600 kWh threshold. At the same time, the fixed monthly charges on Homepower 4 climbed sharply, with the service and administration charge moving from a one-third-fixed structure to a two-thirds-fixed structure inside a single tariff cycle. The headline percentage is the average. The structural shift is what changes who pays what.
The 350 kWh household: a small flat or a frugal home
At roughly 350 kWh a month, you are running fridge, lights, hot water for one or two people, a kettle and microwave, a TV, and not much more. Most one-bedroom flats in the major metros sit in this band.
This is the household that takes the worst proportional hit from the 2026/27 structure. The 8,76 per cent on the energy charge is bad enough; the bigger problem is that the fixed-charge portion of the Homepower 4 bill has roughly doubled inside one tariff cycle. When most of your bill is consumption and only a thin layer is fixed, you can save your way out of an increase by using less. When the fixed layer is now two-thirds of the service and administration charge, that lever does not work the same way: a meaningful share of the bill comes whether you use 350 kWh or 50.
For a low-consumption household the question is no longer “how do I cut another twenty units.” It is whether to migrate down a tariff plan (Homelight) entirely, where the structure is built around lower base load. That switch is worth running the numbers on this month.
The 600 kWh household: a typical family home
Six hundred kilowatt-hours a month is the operating point of a three- or four-person family in a standard suburban house, with the usual mix of appliances, a geyser running on a timer, and either gas or electric cooking.
This is the band that used to sit exactly on the inclining-block threshold. Until 1 April 2026 the marginal cost of the kWh above 600 was a meaningfully higher per-unit price than the kWh below. That cliff is gone. Every unit now prices at the same Homepower 4 flat rate.
The good news for this household is that the structural punishment for cresting 600 kWh in a cold month has been removed. The bad news is that the headline 8,76 per cent now applies to every unit, not just the units in the lower block. If your previous winter spikes used to land you in upper-block territory, the new structure may even leave a 600 to 700 kWh month modestly better off than the old structure would have. If your typical month sat comfortably under 600 kWh, the bill goes up cleanly by close to the headline percentage on the energy side, plus the fixed-charge increase.
The 900 kWh household: large home, electric geyser, electric cooking, or pool
At 900 kWh a month, you are running a larger home (four bedrooms or bigger), with an electric geyser, electric cooking, possibly a pool pump or an electric underfloor heating loop. This is also a common consumption profile for a household that has not yet shifted to gas, heat-pump, or solar.
In absolute rand terms this household pays the largest cash increase from the 2026/27 decision, simply because 8,76 per cent compounds across more units. The structural removal of inclining blocks works in this household’s favour at the margin: the units that used to be priced at the upper-block rate are now priced at the same flat Homepower 4 rate as the rest. The headline 8,76 per cent is the move you can plan around, applied to every kWh, plus the fixed-charge step. There is no longer a separate cliff to watch.
For a household at 900 kWh and above, the structural shift means the case for a capital response (solar PV, heat-pump geyser, gas cooking) holds, but the math has changed in shape: the savings come from displacing energy units against a flat rate rather than chasing units off the top of the old inclining-block ramp. Run the numbers for your house, not last year’s house.
The fixed-charge problem
This is the part the headline 8,76 per cent does not tell you. The portion of your Homepower 4 bill that does not change with consumption (network access, capacity, service, and ancillary charges) went up sharply in the 2026/27 cycle. The fixed share of the service and administration charge moved from about a third of the total charge to about two-thirds inside a single year, with the remaining third still folded into the energy charge until the next phase-in step. The floor of your bill rose more than the headline percentage.
Households on the lowest consumption tier carry the heaviest proportional burden, and Stats SA’s Income and Expenditure of Households release shows electricity already accounts for a disproportionate share of the budget at that band. A rand for rand increase in fixed charges is functionally invisible on a 900 kWh bill and very visible on a 250 kWh one. The 2026/27 structural shift compounds an effect that was already true: low-consumption households pay a higher share of their bill for the right to be connected, before a single kettle is boiled.
What households are actually doing in response
The shift toward solar PV, heat-pump geysers, and gas cooking has continued through 2025 and into 2026. The economics work best for households at the 600 kWh band and above, where every displaced kWh against a flat Homepower 4 rate translates cleanly into a saving. Below the 600 kWh band, the payback runs longer for the same reason the 2026/27 structure hits that band hardest: the fixed charges remain whether or not the household generates its own electricity.
For households that cannot do capital projects, the practical lever remains the geyser. A geyser timer running between two short windows (early morning and late afternoon) plus a thermal jacket on an older unit typically cuts 80 to 120 kWh a month off a four-person household’s consumption. At the new flat Homepower 4 rate, that is the most reliable way for a non-capital household to claw back a chunk of the tariff move every billing cycle.
What this is not
The NERSA decision is not a once-off shock. Tariff increases run on an annual cycle, and Eskom’s multi-year price determination still has further annual reviews ahead inside the current MYPD framework. The 2026/27 cycle also continues the phase-in of the new fixed-charge structure: the share of service and administration moved into fixed charges this year is scheduled to step up again next year. Budgeting around the current bill is sensible; budgeting around the current bill as if it is the final number is not.
Knowing what the increase costs you, in rand, at your real consumption level, is the first step to deciding what is worth doing about it.