How many prepaid electricity units can my budget buy?

How it works

Understand the estimate

Divide your available rand amount by the average price per kilowatt-hour. For example, R500 at R3.00/kWh gives about 166.7 kWh. To estimate days of use, divide units by daily kWh consumption.

Make it more accurate

Try the separate prepaid calculator if your municipality charges a fixed fee or uses more than one tariff block.

These figures are examples based on editable inputs. They do not represent verified current rates, supplier prices or quotes.

A bill is not always a single price

If your bill has a fixed monthly charge, dividing a rand budget by the energy price overstates how many additional units you can buy. Your supplier might also use stepped rates in which the next unit costs more than the previous one. For a realistic result, copy the effective unit rate or block prices from your own bill and use the more detailed prepaid tool.

Try the numbers: For example, with a variable rate of R3.00 per kWh, R600 would represent 200 kWh before any non-energy fees. At 10 kWh per day, that is 20 days of usage; at 20 kWh a day, just 10 days. The answer tells you more about both the tariff and your behaviour than about the size of the budget.

Before relying on the estimate

Do not interpret the result as a municipality-verified quote. The cost of actually buying the units may change with block thresholds, seasonal usage, meter type and service charges.

For more detail, read our calculation and editorial standards. The current price and personal circumstances must come from you; we do not fetch or invent live supplier rates.