- The ARB found the off grid claim dishonest and misleading after the system failed without Eskom.
- Consumer was told to return to Eskom to recharge, exposing the system’s dependence on grid power.
- ARB warned advertisers to stop selling grid-dependent systems as off-grid solutions.
The consumer believed she was buying independence, but what she received was another night without electricity.
When her household switched to a new solar system to operate on solar only, as instructed by the installer, the power did not last the night. By midnight, the home went dark. When help was sought, the answer from the technician was “switch back to Eskom”.
The Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) has now confirmed what the consumer had already learned the hard way. The system could not survive without the grid. In its ruling, the regulator stated plainly, “The Directorate therefore believes that the claim ‘off grid’ is dishonest and misleading.”
The finding came after a complaint against Go Green Energy for advertising a 10KVA system as off-grid when it could not recharge without municipal electricity.
The ARB did not hedge its language, warning that advertising must never deceive desperate people trying to keep their lights on. It referred to the industry’s Code of Conduct, which says advertisements “should not be so framed as to abuse the trust of the consumer or exploit their lack of experience, knowledge or credulity” and that they must be prepared “with a sense of responsibility to the consumer.”
You must return to Eskom
After the failure, the consumer reached out for support. The judgment records exactly what happened next. “The technician told us to switch off the system and run on Eskom only to get the battery charged because it cannot be on solar only,” the customer told the regulator.
Then came the real blow. Instead of fixing the system, the company advised her to spend more. The ruling records her words, “The company informed me that I need to purchase more batteries and add more solar panels for the system to be off the grid.”
In other words, she had paid for an off-grid system and was now being asked to pay again to make it do what the advert had already promised.
What off-grid really means
The ARB turned to basic language to explain why the advertisement could not stand. It adopted the dictionary meaning of off-grid and quoted it as “not connected to the main electricity grid.”
It then explained that an ordinary person seeing the advert would assume one thing only. “The hypothetical reasonable consumer would understand that this product can operate entirely independently of the grid.”
The ARB acknowledged that a battery running flat after several hours was not shocking. What could not be justified was the claim that solar alone could not restore the system. The judgment spells it out. “An off-the-grid solar system should not require grid electricity to recharge.”
Then the decisive line, “it would therefore appear that this system cannot recharge without being connected to Eskom,” ended the case.
Silence that sealed the outcome
Go Green Energy did not respond to the complaint, and that silence worked against it. The ARB said it had little choice but to accept the consumer’s account as accurate. “In the absence of a response, the Directorate must accept that the information that the complainant was given is reflective of how the system works,” the ruling stated. It also rejected the idea that this was simply a faulty installation.
“This was not just a technical error,” the ARB said. “The problem ran deeper than wiring or weather. The system itself was structurally dependent on Eskom.”
A warning that reaches beyond one company
Although Go Green Energy is not a formal member of the ARB, the decision still carries force. The regulator issued a firm instruction to its members not to accept advertising from this company with the term off-grid when selling this type of system.
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