Published: July 8, 2023 at 13:52
30 percent government subsidy on batteries in which you can store power generated by solar panels. That is what government parties VVD and ChristenUnie want.
"Right now, the Netherlands is champion solar panels. We have the most solar panels per capita worldwide," ChristenUnie MP Pieter Grinwis told RTL News. "But we are tremendously behind in storing that self-generated power."
Storing solar power
"That's why we want people to start buying home batteries en masse to store that solar power," says VVD's Silvio Erkens. To encourage that, the parties are thinking of a subsidy of 30 percent per battery.
An average battery costs about 5,000 to 6,000 euros. The plan of ChristenUnie and VVD then gives the buyer a benefit of between 1500 and 2000 euros per battery. The parties want the subsidy to be introduced next year and about 100,000 people to be able to take advantage of it.
Erkens: "Currently, you generate energy during the day while you're not home, and then when you're home in the evening and use power, you have to buy it again. With a battery, you don't have to."
Saling scheme
The parties' proposal comes at a time when the so-called net-metering scheme is about to end. That scheme now ensures that people who supply power from their solar panels back to the energy grid receive compensation.
The parties also believe that energy suppliers should cooperate with solar panel providers so that people who buy solar panels are immediately offered a home battery. Anyone who already has solar panels should, if it were up to the parties, receive an offer from their energy supplier to buy a home battery in the coming years.
In Belgium and Germany, the purchase of such batteries is already subsidized. VVD and ChristenUnie call the schemes there a great success. In Belgium they say the scheme is similar to the one they want to introduce, in Germany some 500,000 people now have a home battery.
Source: Stephan Koole and Marieke van de Zilver
English 
Dutch 
German