One in every six cedis on your ECG bill is tax. Solar takes it off every unit you generate yourself.
Take a home using 500 kWh a month. The bill comes to GH¢1,392.52. Of that, GH¢232.09 is not electricity at all. It is VAT, the National Health Insurance Levy and the GETFund levy, added on top of everything you buy.
Most people only look at the total and the units used. If you break the bill open, you can see where the money goes, and you can see why solar changes more than the energy line.
All figures use the PURC tariffs in force from 1 October 2026. PURC reviews them every quarter, so check your own bill. The examples are illustrations, not quotes.
What is actually on your bill
Every bill above the lifeline level (under 30 kWh a month) has three parts: the energy you use, a fixed monthly service charge, and 20% tax (15% VAT, 2.5% NHIL, 2.5% GETFund) charged on both. Here is how that looks for three typical customers:
| Home, 500 kWh | Shop or office, 1,500 kWh | Factory or large user, 20,000 kWh (Special Load Tariff, low voltage) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energy charge | GH¢1,149.70 | GH¢3,240.34 | GH¢48,042.08 |
| Service charge | GH¢10.73 | GH¢12.43 | GH¢500.00 |
| VAT, NHIL and GETFund | GH¢232.09 | GH¢650.55 | GH¢9,708.42 |
| Total | GH¢1,392.52 | GH¢3,903.32 | GH¢58,250.50 |
| Tax as a share of the bill | 16.7% | 16.7% | 16.7% |
| Service charge as a share | 0.8% | 0.3% | 0.9% |
Two things stand out. The tax is the same one-sixth of the bill for everyone. And the service charge is small: you can ignore it when you are deciding whether solar is worth it.
Why solar cuts the tax too
The 20% is charged on the electricity you buy from the grid. If your panels produce the electricity instead, nothing is bought, so there is nothing to tax. Every unit you generate takes its share of tax off the bill with it.
Solar also removes your most expensive units first. A home pays GH¢2.04 per unit for the first 300 kWh and GH¢2.69 for units above that. Here is what happens if solar covers 70% of what each customer uses:
| Home | Shop or office | Large user (covering 40%) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Units bought from the grid | 500 → 150 kWh | 1,500 → 450 kWh | 20,000 → 12,000 kWh |
| Monthly bill before | GH¢1,392.52 | GH¢3,903.32 | GH¢58,250.50 |
| Monthly bill after | GH¢379.63 | GH¢1,080.42 | GH¢35,190.30 |
| Tax before | GH¢232.09 | GH¢650.55 | GH¢9,708.42 |
| Tax after | GH¢63.27 | GH¢180.07 | GH¢5,865.05 |
| Tax saved per year | about GH¢2,026 | about GH¢5,646 | about GH¢46,120 |
Notice that the home's bill falls by 73%, more than the 70% of units solar covers. That is because the dearest units, the ones above 300 kWh, are the first to go.
The fine print we owe you
We would rather you hear this from us than find out later.
- The service charge stays while you stay connected. It is a fixed monthly fee for having a connection, and it is small (GH¢10.73 for a home, GH¢12.43 for a business, GH¢500 for large users). Only a fully off-grid system removes it, and that means giving up the grid as a backup.
- If your business is VAT-registered, the tax may not be a real cost to you. Registered businesses can generally claim input VAT back, and since 2026 the NHIL and GETFund can be claimed as well. For you the saving is the energy itself. For homes, small businesses below the registration threshold and anyone who cannot claim it back, the tax is a true cost, and solar removes a good part of it. Ask your accountant which group you are in.
- Your savings depend on your usage, your roof and your system size. The tables above are examples. We size a system to your actual bills.
Ghana also now has a national net-metering portal, with smart meters and subsidy support for rooftop systems between 2 and 10 kW. Eligibility rules apply, and we can check them for you.
The charge many businesses don't know they pay: poor power factor
If you run motors, compressors, air conditioners, pumps or machinery, you may be paying a penalty that has nothing to do with how much electricity you use.
Power factor measures how efficiently your site uses the power it draws. Inductive equipment draws extra "reactive" power that does no useful work but loads the network. In Ghana, large customers on the Special Load Tariff (loads of 100 kVA and above) are expected to keep their power factor at 0.90 or higher. Below that, a penalty is added to the bill, growing with how far below 0.90 you fall and with the size of your demand. A study of the policy describes a 5% shortfall below the threshold as a 5% charge. On a bill the size of the large-user example above, even a few points below 0.90 means thousands of cedis a month.
Here is the part that catches people out. Solar lowers the real power you take from the grid, but your motors still draw the same reactive power. The ratio between them can get worse after installing solar, so a site that was just compliant can slip below 0.90 and start paying.
That is why we treat it as part of the job. When we design a system for a commercial or industrial site, our team:
- reads your bills and metering data to find your current power factor,
- sizes and installs correction (capacitor banks or automatic correction) where it is needed,
- checks the solar inverters' settings so the system does not fight the correction, and
- keeps monitoring, so you are not surprised by a penalty on a later bill.
You do not have to work any of that out. Our team will sort it for you.
See your own bill broken down
Send us a recent ECG bill, and we will show you:
- how much of it is energy, service charge and tax,
- whether you are paying a power factor penalty,
- how much of your usage solar could cover, and what that does to the bill.
Contact 360 Solarpac: 055 235 5210 · WhatsApp
Rates: PURC electricity tariffs effective 1 October 2026 (Q4 2026 review: no change from Q3). Tax: 15% VAT plus 2.5% NHIL and 2.5% GETFund on the same base under the VAT Act 2025 (Act 1151). Power factor rule: description of ECG's Special Load Tariff policy from published research; exact penalty calculation appears on your bill and may differ.