2024 update: What does a shower cost in South Africa?

10Aug
by Sean Moolman  
0

With the rapid increases in the price of electricity and water over the past decade, the question is: what does a shower or bath cost in South Africa in 2024?

Most South Africans are aware of the rapidly rising price of electricity (a 937% increase over the period 2007-2024), but the price of water has also been increasing rapidly over the same period.

In fact, the rate of water price increases exceeds that of electricity. (For the full story, see our blog post The Price of Water and Electricity in South Africa: A Tale of Two Tragedies and our 2024 updated analysis.)

South Africans tend not to think twice about the cost of a shower or bath, since both electricity and water used to be very inexpensive.

Is this still true in 2024? Our previous studies in 2022 and earlier were real eye-openers, with the cost of a 10-minute shower using a 15 litre/min showerhead coming to just over R21/shower!

We have now updated the study using the latest approved municipal tariffs for the tariff year July 2024 to June 2025. As you might guess, things look worse than they did last year.

Here is the summary data for 2024 to 2025.

For an average middle-class household in South Africa (LSM7-10), a 10-min shower costs over R24 if you have a ‘standard’ 15 litre/min showerhead! This is about R2.43/min. By changing to a low-flow showerhead and reducing shower time to 6 minutes, you can dramatically reduce this to about R7.78 per shower (or R1.30/min).

In either case, it appears that the days of ‘cheap’ showers are numbered, and we can all do with being more aware of just how much water & electricity we use in the shower or bath.

Conventional wisdom has it that showering uses less water than running a bath. However, a typical bath uses 90 litres of water, so if you shower for longer than 6 minutes with a ‘standard’ showerhead, you will actually use more water than if you had a bath… With an average shower time internationally of 8 minutes, a shallow bath might actually be better for your pocket and the environment!

Of course, even better than a shallow bath is to switch to a low flow showerhead and have shorter showers… During the ‘Day Zero’ water crisis, City of Cape Town recommended showering for less than 2 minutes, and switching to low-flow showerheads (less than 10 litres/min) is compulsory according to City of Cape Town bylaws.

The graphs below show more detailed information on water & energy use and cost per shower for normal & low-flow showerheads, and compared to a ‘standard’ 90 litre bath.

Photo of shower head by Ginger Hendee on Unsplash.

References, methodology & assumptions for calculations

  • Shower & bath temperature of 40°C. See e.g. Lawrence JC & Bull JP. 1976. Thermal conditions which cause skin burns. Engineering in Medicine 5(3):61-63.
  • Average residential water consumption data was obtained from: Viljoen N. 2016. Presentation: City of Cape Town Residential Water Consumption Trend Analysis 2014/15. Last accessed: 21/08/2017.
  • Average residential electricity consumption data was obtained from: Goliger, A. and Cassim, A. (14 and 15 July 2017). Tipping Points: The Impacts of Rising Electricity Tariffs on Households and Household Electricity Demand. 3rd Annual Competition and Economic Regulation (ACER) 2017 Conference, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Last accessed: 21/08/2017.
  • Average bath uses about 90 litres of water. Waterwise. Last accessed: 12/09/2017.
  • “Normal” or standard showerheads use 15 litres of water per minute or more, and low flow showerheads use about 8 litres water per minute. Eskom fact sheet on showerheads. Last accessed: 12/09/2017.
  • Average effective residential water & electricity tariffs were calculated from the published 2024/25 tariffs of the following four metropolitan municipalities: City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane, City of Cape Town and Ethekwini, using the average residential water and electricity consumption values for LSM7-10 obtained from the above references.
  • For ‘low income’ households, the average marginal water tariff is somewhat lower across the four municipalities (due to lower average consumption), at R2.63/kWh for electricity and R47.24/kilolitre for water & sanitation. This yields a cost per bath of R11.11, a cost per 10-minute ‘normal showerhead’ shower of R18.52/shower, and a cost per 6-minute low-flow showerhead shower of R5.93/shower.
  • Energy cost of hot water based on heating water from 15 to 60°C, which requires approximately 5.22 kWh per 100 litre.
  • A study by the Alliance for Water Efficiency also found a shallow bath to be better than a long shower with a high flow showerhead.
  • Average shower time: a recent study at a South African university found an average shower time of over 9 minutes.