Profitability of a home battery
Pofitablility of a home battery
If you want to look at the profitability of a home battery, there are a number of factors that have a considerable impact:
For most of these factors, making animprovementis the main message!
If you already have a digital meter, check your usage data on mijn.fluvius.be.
To ensure that the cost of your home battery sufficiently justifies the benefits, installing a battery of 1 to 1,5 kWh per kWp (kilowatt peak) from the solar panels is recommended. After the introduction of the capacity tariff, this will shift to 1 kWh per kWp from the solar panels.
For an average solar panel installation of 4 kWp, ideally you should install a home battery of 4 to 6 kWh.
Maximise your self-consumption of solar power, apply for your premium in plenty of time… and also take a close look at your energy contract.
How long does it take for a home battery to pay for itself? There are a lot of pie-in-the-sky stories doing the rounds about the payback time. In reality, the payback time for a home battery is anything from 8 to 14 years and even up to 20 years.
Prosumer tariff or injection tariff
FLANDRES
By the end of 2024, approximately 80% of the new digital meters will have been installed and by July 2029, everyone in Flanders should have one. If you live in Flanders and have solar panels, but don’t yet have a digital meter, then you pay a fixed prosumer tariff each year. This means you are both a producer (i.e. you inject your surplus power into the grid) and a consumer (when the sun doesn’t shine, you draw down power from the grid). If you coordinate this production/consumption nicely, the final reading on your meter will be approximately zero.
This means it will be as though you haven’t used anything from the grid. But in actual fact, you are a double-user of the electricity grid. Which is why the Flemish government introduced the prosumer tariff, which is charged on the assumed take-up by the grid, depending on the capacity of your solar installation and the region where you live.
TIP: if you opt for a home battery, then the smart thing to do would be to request adigital meter as soon as possible from Fluvius.
With a digital meter you can measure precisely how much power you are drawing from the grid and how much you are injecting back into it again. The prosumer tariff then lapses.
The energy that you take from the grid and the (unused solar) energy that you inject into the network are calculated separately.
Using the VREG V-test you can check to see which power feed-in contract gives you the best feed-in payment.
You will find a clear summary of Frequently Asked Questions and answers about the prosumer tariff (Dutch only) at VREG.
WALLONIA
In the past and for a long time, the owners of solar panels did not have to pay anything extra to inject their surplus power into the grid. But that has now changed. From 1st October 2020, the Walloon government also introduced the prosumer tariff. In2022 and 2023, the Walloon Region will continue to partially compensate the prosumer tariff, albeit at a rate of 54.27%. This will still be done through a premium paid by the grid operator. So the remaining 45.73% willbe paid for by the prosumers.
BRUSSELS
As was the case in Wallonia, the Brussels Region did not have a prosumer tariff for a long time. This changed in 2020 as well, with a lower payment for the power that you inject. The new system with an injection tariff has applied in Brussels since 1st November 2021. The bidirectional digital meter will measure the amount of electricity you purchase and the amount you consume separately. You pay for the electricity that you draw down from the grid at the drawdown tariff. You then receive a predefined amount per kWh for the electricity you inject: the injection tariff. This amount depends on your energy provider.
Capacity tariff
In Flanders the method for calculating the tariff for the grid charges on electricity bills is changing.
When will this change take place?The roll-out of the so called 'capacity tariff' by VREG was initially planned by 1st January 2022, then by 1st July 2022. Now, (at the request of Fluvius and Febeq, the federation of energy companies), it has again been postponed to 1st January 2023.
What is changing exactly? It is another way of spreading the grid costs on all consumers. The new capacity tariff calculates the costs for the consumption from the electricity grid not any more completely based on the quantity of electricity you use, but largely on the basis of the theusage peaks. In other words, capacity tariff takes into account the usage peaks of your family or home.
The distinction between the day and night tariff will also disappear. The grid tariff you pay will therefore no longer depend on the moment of consumption. The home battery will then help you to use as much energy as possible from your solar panels. This means you will take less power from the grid, so that the risk of ‘peaks’ in your consumption from the grid is reduced. It also means you will make an additional saving on your energy bill. So, a home battery will be more attractive than it was before, particularly in Flanders!
Recycling a home battery
When purchasing a home battery, check to see whether the take-back obligation(i.e. taking back and recycling the battery at the end of its life) is adhered to! Like all other batteries, home batteries are also subject to the take-back obligation by the manufacturer/importer. This is handled on a Europe-wide level. The manufacturer/importer is required to provide the option of taking back the home battery via the installer at the end of its service life. The manufacturer/importer is the company that sells the batteries on the Belgian market and hence it is subject to the take-back obligation in Belgium. A manufacturer/importer that is a member of Bebat pays an environmental contribution on home batteries. The cost of this contribution can be passed on to the end customer.
At the end of the home battery’s service life, you as the customer can be sure that the discarded battery will be taken back free of charge. This is the case even if the supplier is no longer in business. The environmental contribution for a home battery weighing 100 kg is 239 euros (figure for 2022). It is definitely worth taking the trouble to talk about this when making your purchase!
