2023-07-20 10:00:00
People who pay their electricity per hour naturally prefer to use that electricity when it is as cheap as possible. Let that be the time with the most green electricity…
In recent weeks, there has been regular excitement about negative electricity prices. On the Epex power exchange, a kilowatt hour was sometimes worth minus 10 to minus 50 cents for one or more hours: you received money when you used power.
Everyone wants to receive money. But keep in mind that there are two catches. The first is that those Epex prices do not include taxes and charges for the energy supplier. That comes down to about 17 cents that you have to add: 15 cents tax and about 2 cents for the energy company. In other words: if it is said that the electricity price is 10 cents negative, as a consumer you still pay about 7 cents per kWh. That is dirt cheap, but getting money is something else.
The second point of attention is that the electricity price can also turn out to be very high, up to a maximum of 5 euros per kWh! That (almost) never happens, and you can decide not to use (almost) any electricity during those hours. But if you don’t like risk, ‘paying electricity by the hour’ (a dynamic contract is something like that) may not be for you.
Insurance premium
That is perhaps a pity, because in practice such a dynamic contract is often cheaper than a permanent contract. With a permanent contract like this, you actually take out a kind of insurance at high prices, and insurance costs money. A dynamic contract has no insurance premium.
There are already many energy companies in the Netherlands that offer dynamic contracts. Tibber and Zonneplan are at the top of the top 5 of EnergieCompare.nl for cheapest providers and you will come across a trusted name such as ANWB in 4th place. However, the Netherlands is by no means a frontrunner with dynamic contracts. In Norway, where Tibber comes from, 70 percent of households already have such a contract.
Cheap is green
Many large energy companies in the Netherlands do not yet have dynamic contracts, but will have to offer them according to the new energy law. It is not surprising that the government wants to encourage this. Paying per hour encourages the consumption of electricity when the price is low. You get low or negative prices when the supply of electricity exceeds the demand. And nowadays a large supply is almost always due to a lot of solar and wind energy. In short: cheap electricity is green electricity and it is therefore good for the energy transition.
Rens Schoorl sees this happening in practice at Tibber. “On April 19, for example, our customers purchased four times more power in hours with negative prices than on a day with normal prices.” Zonneplan also reports such effects. And I know a Tibber customer who recently greeted me with a big grin. He had fully charged the battery of his car and received another 12 euros…
Turn off solar panels
At the same time, he had switched off his solar panels, because yes: every kWh you supply to the grid at negative prices costs you money. That is, if the stock market price excluding tax falls below minus 17 cents. Because as said: at minus 10 cents, a kWh still costs 7 cents due to taxes. If you can still balance the electricity, you will still earn 7 cents if you feed back at that time. But if you annually return much more than you consume, then the electricity you return can indeed cost you money at negative prices.
My solar panels mainly supply power in hours that other solar panels do as well, so the supply is large and the price is low or even negative. That prevents me from exchanging my current variable contract, with a reasonable, fixed feed-in fee, for a dynamic contract.
According to Rens Schoorl, I have to think about that again: “There are already many hours with negative prices excluding taxes, but including taxes it does not occur that often.” I’ll take a closer look and let you know what my conclusion is.
In his weblog ‘Vincent wants sun’, Vincent Dekker highlights innovations and developments in the field of green energy, close to and far from home. More episodes at Trouw.nl/vincentwilzon. Vincent now also has a podcast, including about heat pumps – listen to it via this link or look it up through the known channels.
Read also:
Hourly prices for electricity: helping the grid and making money go hand in hand
If you could save $150 a year on your electricity bill with a little effort, would you do it? And if that becomes 450 euros in a few years, will you do it? Time to delve into hourly rates.
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