Energy company Vandebron charge customers with solar panels around €20 extra

Energy company Vandebron will impose an extra charge of 10 to 20 euros per month, on average, on customers with solar panels. “We do this because it is fair that people with solar panels pay more for the costs of the growing number of panels in the Netherlands,” financial director Kim Verdouw of Vandebron told the Volkskrant. “But I want to stress that it remains good for the energy transition and financially to generate solar energy yourself.”

The extra charge depends on how much energy customers feed back into the grid each year. “It starts at 4 euros per month for up to 1,000 kilowatt hours per year and goes up to 46 euros for more than 5,000 kilowatt hours per year,” Verdouw said. The scheme applies immediately to new customers. The over 70,000 existing Vandebron customers with solar panels will get the charge at the next review of their rates. For those with variable contracts, that will be on October 1. Customers without panels will pay relatively favorable electricity rates from that moment on.

The number of homes with solar panels on the roof has grown explosively in recent years. As a result, there is often a surplus of energy in sunny moments, leading to very low or even negative prices during peak hours. Solar panel owners usually notice little of the low prices. Due to the net metering rule, they can offset the power they feed back into the grid against the power they purchase when the sun isn’t shining. That means that they get high rates for the energy they push onto the grid during low-rate times.

The abundance of solar energy also results in higher imbalance costs when an unexpected amount of energy is brought onto the grid. Energy companies settle these costs in the electricity tariff that applies to all customers. As a result, customers without solar panels end up subsidizing customers with solar panels, according to the Volksrkant.

As the number of panels increases, this inequality grows. The Ruttie III and Rutte IV Cabinets have proposed to gradually phase out net metering. Parliament agreed to start doing so in 2025. The proposal has yet to go through the Senate, and the collapse of the Rutte IV Cabinet last month will likely further delay the process.

Vandebron, which offers green electricity generated entirely in the Netherlands, can’t keep waiting for net metering to be phased out, Verdouw said to the Volkskrant. About 40 percent of its customers have solar panels, compared to the national average of just under 30 percent. So Vandebron faces relatively high costs. If it passes those costs on in the general tariffs, customers without solar panels will be more inclined to leave, according to the Essent subsidiary.

“At first glance, this levy may seem like bad news for the energy transition, but it is actually the next step,” Verdouw told the newspaper. “We make the amount of the levy dependent on the amount of energy you supply to the grid. In this way, we encourage you to use the energy you generate yourself.”

According to the Volkskrant, there is a good chance that other power companies will follow suit and make the solar panel levy a standard in the energy market. “If you don’t follow suit, you will lose customers without solar panels, and you will attract customers with panels, so you will price yourself out of the market,” an employee of another energy company, who did not want to be named for competition reasons, told the newspaper. “The amount of this levy will probably become a new rate on which companies compete.”