Here in europe we’re gonna have to pay the electrical company for the energy our own solar panels generate above a certain amount.
“Can we just turn them off?”
“No 😠”
Because they have to give that energy away in order to keep the grid stable.
Hopefully better battery storage will make this better in the future.
The aim with it is to naturally discourage people from overproducing in such overproduction times - e.g. maybe you disable your solar panels when you predict it will happen, lessening the sudden impact on the grid.
FWIW you could buy a high capacity home battery already to eliminate it yourself (charge the battery in those times), but they’re still expensive.
Where in Europe is this? Europe isn’t a monolith, after all.
Here in the Netherlands we (currently) still have the “salderingsregeling” which is used to reimburse people for the solar they feed back into the grid, though that will eventually go away.
Paying people for solar on the roof is a bit tricky in general, and probably not sustainable long term:
- The money to maintain the grid has to come from somewhere, and if a lot of people have a bill of zero euros or a negative amount, that system kind of breaks down.
- The grid has a maximum capacity (especially in residential neighbourhoods) so you cannot pump an infinite amount of power back into the grid. If many houses in a neighbourhood have solar the grid simply cannot cope.
In the Netherlands we now also have a “terugleveringstoeslag” where you have to pay a monthly fee based on the maximum peak power delivered to the grid over the year. At least, the bigger electrical companies already have it, the rest will soon follow. My coworker (who has way too many solar panels installed) got a letter from Essent that he had to pay 67 euros monthly starting October. So he switched companies, but he’ll have to figure out something else next time.
They provide no support for the solar. If I have problems I have to go to my solar installer.
I thought that was the point of paying so much for solar? To be OFF the grid?
