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   MyForest (myforest@mas.to)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 10:53:19 JST MyForest

   in reply to

   • Fabio Manganiello

   @blacklight We don't have the balance rule in the UK, but we do have payments for exporting to the grid.

   You typically get paid less to export than you pay to import. That is somewhat equivalent to your fee in Netherlands.

   However, there is also time-of-use tariff which is quite popular and that even allows you to pull from the grid when it's cheap and push when the export price is good so you can make a profit just by storing electricity in your domestic system. e.g.:

   https://octopus.energy/smart/outgoing/

   • clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Fabio Manganiello (blacklight@social.platypush.tech)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 10:53:20 JST Fabio Manganiello

     Bi-directional power generation is the future of sustainable grids.

     If I have solar panels that produce more energy than I need, I push thay extra energy back to the grid so others can use it. That reduces the demand for dirtier energy by design.

     If I pay for consuming electricity, then I should be paid for creating electricity.

     Unfortunately, more and more energy companies seem to go in the opposite direction. As many struggle to remain profitable as they are finally forced to pivot away from dirty energy generation, they're desperate to find other sources of revenue. And they couldn't come up with anything smarter than turning domestic electricity generation from a (tiny) cost for them into an undeserved revenue stream. These companies would literally prefer you to waste your excess electricity, or use it to mine Bitcoins or whatever, than distributing it back to appliances which may need it. They could invest more in storage, if they really have a problem with excessive loads on the grid from domestic production, but in a competitive market with thin profit margins it's always easier to charge the customer - long-term investments are often seen as a liability rather than an asset.

     If you are Dutch and you have a contract with Budget Energie, or with any other company that has irrationally decided to turn electricity production into a cost for the producer, then consider terminating your contract with them immediately. The world doesn't need these parasites who readily sacrifice long-term viable business models on the altar of short-term profitability.

     p.s. Yes, storage technologies are the proper solution to the problem, but they're currently expensive, I get that point. So these companies may be thinking of getting the owners of solar panels to share the costs. It may sound like a good solution for profitability in corporate meetings, but it throws in the air the whole system of incentives that we've put in place to encourage people to move away from centralized grids. We need more large batteries on the grid and we need them right now. If it's too expensive/unprofitable for private companies to do that kind of long-term investment, then the government needs to take ownership of that problem. Governments have poured billions into recovery plans or military aids. Governments *can* be big when they want to. So what's preventing them from ensuring that our own energy grid is as future-proof as it can?

     https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/01/budget-energie-to-charge-solar-panels-owners-a-fee-for-grid-use/