The Tweede Kamer, the lower chamber of of the Dutch parliament, has approved a proposal to phase out the country's net-metering scheme from 2027.
Trade group Holland Solar welcomed the move, saying it will bring clarity and enable PV companies to plan future strategies.
“The political discussion on this subject has lasted more than 10 years and is now coming to an end,” it said in a statement. “The political ping-pong has never been good for the solar energy sector.“
Holland Solar said the focus should now shift to stimulating the increase of self-consumption of solar power.
“We are pleased that the energy minister has promised to enter into discussions with the market about the solutions they envision to increase the self-consumption of solar power by households,” it stated.
The association proposes offering additional incentives for homeowners to buy solar boilers, heat pumps, and other solutions that promote PV self-consumption.
“The ‘flex bonus' would be a stack subsidy that rewards the combination of the purchase of solar panels with a measure to increase own consumption and standardizes devices on their controllability,” said Holland Solar.
The proposal has been rejected and modified several times in recent years.
Energy Storage NL and Netbeheer Nederland, the Dutch association of electricity and gas network operators, propose phasing out net metering with a rebate program for storage systems. They argue this approach would commercialize battery technologies in the Dutch market by 2023 and address grid bottlenecks caused by rapid solar capacity growth, particularly in the low-voltage network.
CE Delft and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) recently conducted a study for renewable energy associations to evaluate the impact of scrapping the Netherlands' net-metering scheme on residential photovoltaic system profitability by early 2027.
The report found that residential PV system owners could maintain their financial returns without selling excess power to the grid, provided they increase their self-consumption from about 30% to 60%.
“This can be done with a heat pump or charging an electric car,” they said. “But it is important to do this in a grid-friendly way.”
The researchers said that the current payback time for a residential PV system is seven to nine years. Without net metering, this could extend to 12 to 17 years, depending on future grid fees set by Dutch energy providers.
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