You really shouldn't discourage solar panels

2023-09-01 07:45:00

Energy companies want to supply sustainable electricity. But now that more and more green electricity is coming, their profits are under pressure. Time for a major government intervention?

After Australia, the Netherlands has the most solar panels per capita. So we are doing very well with solar power. But it’s still not nearly enough. If we want to generate all our energy in a climate-neutral way by 2050, says TNO, among others, we will have to install ten times as many solar panels on roofs, in meadows and on the water. I think that is our social duty to our posterity.

You can imagine that measures that make installing solar panels unattractive do not make me happy. Such as the fixed feed-in costs charged by Vandebron when you feed power from your panels back to the grid. That can cost panel owners up to 552 euros per year.

I was shocked by that, but I was even more shocked by a post from last week in it AD. That newspaper had made a round of comparison sites and guess what? Many more energy companies already charge panel owners extra. Some energy companies no longer even want panel owners as customers.

If you enter on such a comparison site that you have panels, you will no longer see their name. Others deny new customers with panel benefits that they do grant other customers or charge ten euros more per month for a contract with a panel owner.

Commerce vs grandchildren

Their problem is netting: the right of panel owners to set off any power they have left over in the summer and feed it back to the grid against the power they purchase from the grid in the winter. This net metering has led to a socially highly desirable development: record quantities of solar panels have been installed on roofs. But it costs the energy companies money, it lowers their profits.

So it is logical that energy companies charge panel owners extra costs or no longer want them as customers? Yes, you could say, because they are commercial companies with shareholders who want to see a profit. But you can also say no to that logic, because as a society we have a duty to produce much more sustainable energy, so that we leave our grandchildren a liveable world. Then you should not discourage solar panels.

Roofs full of solar panels and heat pumps in Kropswolde. We want that everywhere, but energy companies are seeing their profits fall.Image Vincent Dekker

Much more profit

Here, social and commercial interests collide head-on. It is remarkable that Vandebron, one of the greenest energy companies in the Netherlands, is taking the lead in this. On the one hand, they compete with an open mind: they have neatly announced the return costs. At the same time, Vandebron is one of the companies that no longer makes you an offer on comparison sites if you own panels, it discovered AD.

If Vandebron were a poor company, you could still understand it. But Vandebron is a daughter of Essent, which itself belongs to the German company Eon. Eon announced at the half-year figures that profit this year will probably increase by about 50 percent to almost three billion euros. I have the feeling that a small part of that three billion would be enough to compensate for Vandebron’s net metering disadvantage, so that you would not have to implement a discouraging policy for solar panels.

Hardly needed

I myself am a customer of SamenOm, a cooperative. In February I received a sympathetic message: the profit had been above expectations last year and as a non-profit company it gave all customers 50 euros back. That also works.

Now I don’t know if it would be a good thing if all energy companies had to become cooperatives. The Dutch government will probably never be able to make this mandatory. But what I do know is that the government, outgoing or not, must come up with something quickly to prevent a lasting clash between commercial and social interests. Because we really need those solar panels.

Vincent Dekker writes about innovations and developments in the field of green energy, close to and far from home. More episodes at Trouw.nl/vincentwilzon. Vincent also has a podcast – check it out via this link or look it up through the known channels.