I’m not sure when in 2025 the law takes effect - or if it’s already in effect - but there is a ban on installing solar panels if you have an analog meter. People who already had solar panels before 2025 and an analog meter are grandfathered in, but the grandfathering is only good until Sibelga forces you change to a digital electric meter (at which point you get a lousy price for injecting energy).
I heard if you want to install solar panels going forward, you are better off selling your energy to the neighbors than feeding the grid. Otherwise to feed the grid you must apply for green certificate which entails a process that includes replacing your meter with a digital one.
I’m not 100% sure, but I heard that you need to notify sibelga for new installation and if you want to inject to the grid you’ll need the smart meter. I don’t think there is a ban if you want to self consume all your solar production. I’m looking to install PV panels at the moment and I’m thinking about adding enough batteries to self consume in the evening.
That is my understanding as well. The policing only happens when it comes to selling your energy (to the grid in particular). The price you get for selling the energy back is so lousy that it often makes sense to buy and manage batteries, which is inefficient and wasteful but probably less wasteful than the artificial injection overhead.
In principle it would make sense to store energy in a water tank as well, which may be more efficient than the double conversion with batteries assuming the water is not directly solar heated. But I can only imagine the complexity of a solar inverter being smart enough to manage that.
Also probably makes sense to have refrigerators do most of their running during peak sunlight hours, but also complex to manage.
So, we have similar restrictions where I live and the reason is sensible: analog meters can’t track power going the other way separately, and they can’t reimburse you forever the same amount for the power you put back. Your offset is fine, but shared power can’t be billed the same.
they can’t reimburse you forever the same amount for the power you put back.
Not sure why you say that. It would only be a problem if every single household generated a surplus, which would be very unrealistic. As it is, they already charge an annual flat fee on top of consumption costs in Brussels to cover overhead.
I’m more referring to the fact that the rate they charge you covers things that you shouldn’t get reimbursed for. You aren’t getting free repairs in an outage, for example. That’s paid by your rate. On top of protective devices they need to have present. It isn’t a like for like exchange.
If you paid, for example, 1EUR or whatever currency per unit of delivered power, you generating like units doesn’t offset any of their infrastructure to deliver you power when you aren’t generating. Appropriate would be a fraction of that 1EUR per unit. Which is why tracking power going the other way is important to them.
I don’t particularly like that, but it does make sense to me.
I’m more referring to the fact that the rate they charge you covers things that you shouldn’t get reimbursed for.
That would be the flat fee that they charge annually for overhead (e.g. ~€100/yr). If they are stuffing more overhead into the raw consumption cost per kWh, that’s some dodgy accounting. Here is a typical figure:
- consumption: 21 €cents/kWh
- injection: 7 €cents/kWh
If I inject 1 kWh, I get 7 €cents/kWh while someone else pays 21 €cents/kWh for that same unit of energy that I injected. That’s 14 cents overhead (plus the annual flat fees) on 7 cents of energy. When the overhead is more than double the value of the thing delivered, it seems like a swindle especially considering it does not even cover my overhead in generating it. If my solar panels get trashed by hail, the energy supplier says: your problem, not ours, because that’s on your side of the meter. So in effect, I’m actually getting less than 7 €cents/kWh once I factor in my own overhead.
Anyway, I think the take-away here is that it does not make sense for consumers to feed the grid in Belgium. At least not from their own panels. The Brusol deal is entirely different and worth a look. Brusol owns the PVs that sit on your roof for 30 years and they maintain them. Brusol holds the green certs. Then in one of their offers they simply undercut Electrabel by ~50%, so you pay ~10 €cents/kWh regardless of whether it comes from your roof or the grid.
I think if you’re a heavy consumer (consume more than your roof-covered solar array can feed), the Brusol deal is best. If you’re a light consumer, then going off-grid with batteries makes more sense.
The shame of the Brusol deal is you are locked into a 30 year contract and thus tethered to them, dependant on them to treat you right in a very long term relationship. Off-grid gives the freedom, autonomy, and privacy you expect to have when your roof space is sacrificed for PVs.
So that difference and the injection rate is what I’m talking about. Seems like you already have that. The problem with analog meters is they can’t track that without two physical meters.
I’m not sure I agree with it being dodgy accounting though. You don’t get paid back for their infrastructure. They cannot pay you for your contributions what they charge you for theirs. While socialized power would be nice, it’s still a dream.