From now on, every kWh of solar power that Eneco customers supply back will cost them 11.5 cents Economy
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Eneco will charge customers who supply solar power 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). That costs an average customer about 350 euros per year. Those who do not have panels will pay less.
From June, Eneco will charge 11.5 cents to people with a variable electricity contract and solar panels or with a new permanent contract. Anyone who nets 3,000 kWh of electricity per year must pay Eneco 345 euros for this. That rate is in line with the feed-in costs charged by Vandebron and Budgetenergie, for example. These companies started with the return costs. They argue that the costs of the netting scheme are skyrocketing. The netting scheme allows people to offset the supplied electricity against the purchased electricity.
Supervisory Authority for Consumers & Markets has started an investigation into the return costs because it is unclear whether they are not too high. That research should be ready next month.
The feed-in costs are bad news for Eneco customers with solar panels, but according to the energy company it is good news for three-quarters of customers who do not generate solar power. To date, they have contributed to the costs incurred for processing and netting the solar power. The regular electricity rate for customers will be reduced by 6 cents per kWh, which is a benefit of 150 euros for an average household without solar panels.
Major energy supplier
Turn on those devices when the sun is shining
Rianne de Voogt, Eneco
Eneco, which has around two million customers, is the first major energy supplier to charge direct feed-in costs. Vattenfall has announced that it will also introduce them and Essent is currently recovering the extra costs by withholding cashbacks from customers with solar panels. The feed-in costs influence the payback period for solar panels, according to calculations by comparison site Keuze.nl last week. Due to the extra costs, interest in solar panels has declined.
“Customers who are going to pay feed-in costs will only do so for the kWh actually supplied. The more self-generated electricity customers consume directly, the fewer feed-in costs are charged,” reports Rianne de Voogt of Eneco. If you run the dishwasher or use other power guzzlers on a sunny day instead of in the evening, you save money. “Switch on those devices when the sun is shining, you don’t have to pay for every kWh of solar power that does not go through the meter.” In fact, a kind of dynamic power contract is created: if you use a lot of solar power directly yourself, it works out cheaper.
Eneco customers who supply more electricity to the grid than they consume on an annual basis will receive 14.5 cents per kWh. Minus the 11.5 cents feed-in costs, that electricity yields only 3 cents. That was 5 cents.
Anyone who has solar panels can still have very cheap electricity. Because even though it costs 11.5 cents per kWh to supply the electricity to the grid, the netting scheme allows that amount of electricity to be taken from the grid again later – when the sun has set – for free. Solar panels become less lucrative due to the feed-in costs, but they continue to pay off.
Anyone who signs a permanent contract with Eneco from this summer will already have to deal with the feed-in costs. Customers with a variable rate will be faced with the return costs in phases from June to August.
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