Dutch energy company Budget Energie will immediately stop monthly metering. The company previously changed its policy from annual netting to monthly netting, making solar panel owners unfavorable. Compensation will be retroactive.
Monday evening Carolyn Brinsen Director of Budget Energie, In the broadcast of the TV program Radar Let him know that her company will stop the monthly netting. “We will start compensating affected clients from July 1, the moment this is implemented. These are clients with a variable monthly contract,” she said. According to the company, only the invoices are corrected after July 1, as there is a monthly balance, because in the invoices prior to that period, the feed charge was 100 percent of the delivery rate.
This compensation will be applied to customers with a variable contract who have received their annual or final bill effective July 1. On its website, Budget Energy says That this change takes time to be processed in the systems and that it is not yet possible to give an accurate indication when invoices are corrected. The energy company says it can share more information on this soon.
Budget Energie suggests that the discussion about the netting arrangement partly formed the basis of the previous decision to start netting on a monthly basis. On its website, the company says: “We believe it is important to discuss current clearing arrangements, but note that this is not the time. This is why we are reviewing our decision on netting. Keep asking about this and call on politicians to critically consider a better system.” Some countries around us, for example, encourage local storage of solar energy by residents or in neighborhoods. We think the government should look at other ways to encourage sustainability.”
The company states that although the netting scheme has had a positive impact on the growth of the number of solar panels and thus sustainability, the scheme is now “obsolete”. Budget Energie believes that due to the lower price of solar panels, the payback period is much shorter and therefore there is excess subsidy. In addition, according to the company, there is now no internal incentive to use energy more intelligently and the increased costs incurred, for example during the sunny moments during the day when there is so much supply and hardly any demand, basically they end up with people without solar panels.
It is not entirely clear why Budget Energie is now reversing its net metering policy. (Negative) media attention may have played a role and this could also apply to the ongoing lawsuit. Tweakers Rienzilla disagreed with the Budget Energie move and believed that energy suppliers were obligated to balance the electricity saved on an annual basis. He started his own lawsuit against the electric company. This procedure is still ongoing. Incidentally, he points out that Budget Energie did not loudly acknowledge that monthly netting is not allowed. This will be included in the new energy law, which has not yet been finalized, but the current law does not provide for it in black and white, although it is clear that the legislator’s intention is for the netting to be carried out only annually.