A home battery after net metering ends: what changes in 2027?

What changes on 1 January 2027

Until the end of 2026 you may set the power your solar panels feed in against the power you draw. That is net metering. The Dutch government writes that the net metering scheme stops from 1 January 2027. The earlier plan was to phase it out from 2025; that is not happening. According to the ACM a supplier cannot postpone that date, but your contract can still give you a right to net metering. So read what your contract says.

After 1 January 2027 you pay for all the power you draw, and for the power you feed in you get a payment from your supplier.

Feed-in payment and feed-in costs

The supplier sets the payment itself, but it must be reasonable. Until 1 January 2030 it is at least 50% of the price you pay for electricity without energy tax and VAT, the ACM writes. The government calls that the bare supply price.

On top of that many suppliers charge feed-in costs. According to the government these may only be costs the supplier incurs to process the power fed in. The ACM warns that those costs are sometimes higher than the payment. Milieu Centraal says they differ widely between companies; compare them when you choose a new contract.

Own use: that is where the gain is

On average you use about 30 percent of the power your solar panels generate yourself, Milieu Centraal writes. The rest goes to the grid. Solar power you use yourself is about four times cheaper than power you buy, according to Milieu Centraal. After 2027 own use therefore pays the most.

A home battery is one way to use more yourself: it charges with your surplus during the day and gives that power back in the evening. There are cheaper ways too. Run the washing machine, the dishwasher or the electric car during the day when the sun shines. According to Milieu Centraal, smart charging of an electric car takes your own use from 30 to over 50 percent, about as much as a home battery.

When a battery helps, and when not

A battery mainly makes sense if you feed in a lot of power during the day and use a lot in the evening. You can see that in your smart meter's app or on your annual bill. Milieu Centraal advises not to choose the battery too large: it should cover your evening and night use.

A battery makes less sense if you have few panels, are home a lot during the day and already use the power yourself, or if your contract still lets you net meter after 2027. Milieu Centraal writes that a home battery of 6 kWh on average, with inverter and installation, costs a few thousand euros, that you will most likely not earn it back at the moment and that there is no national subsidy.

So do the sums yourself: how many kWh do you feed in per year, what do you get for that after 2027, what do you pay in feed-in costs, and what does the battery cost per usable kWh. The Consumentenbond uses that last measure too.

Dynamic energy contract

On a dynamic contract the price changes per hour or per quarter hour. With a dynamic contract you can buy power when the price is low and sell it again when it is high, Milieu Centraal writes. A battery can help: charging in cheap hours, discharging in expensive ones. The ACM points out that on such a contract your feed-in payment also changes more often.

If you want to do this, check whether the battery's app supports charging by time or by price, and whether your supplier allows it. What it brings depends on the prices; nobody guarantees that in advance.

Plug-in or fixed battery

You plug a plug-in battery into the socket yourself. In an ordinary socket it is limited to 800 watts. Milieu Centraal does not yet recommend plug-in batteries, because a circuit that gets power from the grid and from the battery can be overloaded without the fuse tripping. How to make that risk smaller is in the guide on connecting a plug-in battery.

A fixed home battery is fitted by an installer. Installers connect home batteries to a separate circuit in the fuse box, following the Dutch standard NEN 1010, Milieu Centraal writes. A separate 48-volt battery, such as the Motoma 5.12 kWh or the Motoma M88 Pro 10 kWh, does not work on 230 volts without an inverter; you have such a system installed together with an inverter.

Which plug-in battery suits you is in the guide choosing a home battery. All models are under home batteries.