New model aims to simplify solar

A new electricity subscription model aims to eliminate barriers to solar adoption by combining grid and solar electricity into a single, seamless bill.

OneBill will launch on 1 May 2026 by South African integrated solar and energy provider Wetility. It aims to rewrite the experience of electricity, creating an effortless all-in-one energy experience.

“OneBill is designed to improve the economic and service experience of our customers,” said Ikenna Oguguo, Wetility co-founder and chief product officer, during The Energy Leap: Showcasing the Power of Investment in Innovation launch event in Johannesburg.

“Wetility will be transparently showing guaranteed savings with OneBill, because solar should be a mainstream solution to energy cost, rather than an added expense to take on.”

According to Wetility, solar is the cheapest and most accessible energy source. Despite this, the company says adoption is estimated to be only around 1% across SA’s residential sector.

Wetility says the inability to scale solar adoption has left households caught between unreliable supply and unaffordable alternatives. While millions face daily power outages and rising electricity tariffs, the transition to solar has remained limited. The company attributes this to high upfront costs, complex technical language, long payback periods, and concerns about additional expenses, all of which discourage consumers from choosing solar power.

It says these barriers exist within an economic environment marked by high unemployment, an energy mix still reliant on coal, and electricity tariffs that have increased far faster than inflation.

Rewriting the electricity experience

According to Wetility, customers are often left to act as “overnight engineers”, frequently ending up with incorrectly sized systems. This is an issue that some industry experts estimate affects more than half of all installations, reducing both customer satisfaction and financial returns.

OneBill aims to address this by using historical usage data to size each system precisely to the customer’s needs. As those needs change, AI-driven monitoring automatically prompts Wetility to adjust system capacity, aiming to sustain savings.

Unified prepaid energy

Wetility aims to eliminate the need for customers to juggle two separate entities: the grid provider on one side and a solar provider on the other. Instead, Onebill seeks to consolidate everything into a single, seamless subscription. The result, says Wetility, is guaranteed savings, an optimally sized system and a frictionless energy experience that evolves with each customer’s needs.

“Through the Wetility app, customers will make one payment per month for all energy consumed,” says Oguguo. “OneBill leverages AI to predict customers’ expected energy consumption and immediately issues adequate electricity tokens from each energy supplier. This simplifies the entire experience via patent-protected technology from Wetility.”

Built-in smart alerts and real-time monitoring will keep customers informed about their energy usage. Unlike traditional systems that require users to estimate how long their remaining kWh balance will last, OneBill aims to offer clear and intuitive insights that help customers manage their power more effectively.

Proprietary software interplay

At its core, OneBill is powered by a software engine that addresses the three barriers to solar adoption: switching costs; commercial viability; and customer experience. The model unifies Wetility’s use of big data analytics, machine learning, and AI-driven decision-making.

This interplay, says the company, makes OneBill:

• More accurate in matching price to actual consumption needs.
• More intuitive in delivering a frictionless, managed customer experience.
• More scalable as the pathway to true mass adoption.