End of the feed-in tariff in Belgium

In Belgium, until the end of last year, there were attractive and good payments when photovoltaic system owners fed their own electricity into the public grid. In contrast to Germany or Austria, photovoltaic power producers received a 1:1 remuneration!

A new government decision was  to cancel the feed-in tariff. However, there was an exception for systems that would be installed by December 31, 2020. Those should receive the attractive feed-in tariff for 15 years. Many new system owners were therefore concerned to complete the installation of their photovoltaic system before the end of 2020.

But on January 15, 2021, the government decided to withdraw this commitment. So there will be no more feed-in tariff for these plants either! The explanation for this is that the feed-in tariff would be too expensive for the government. On the other hand, because of the attractive feed-in tariff, there would be no ambition among the population to consume their own photovoltaic electricity themselves in their homes. The consequences would be grid overloads, because all photovoltaic systems would feed an enormous amount of electricity into the public grid at the same time without increased consumption.

Without feed-in tariff, the own photovoltaic system will amortize only after many years. Unless the self-consumption of the photovoltaic electricity will be increased. This reduces the amortization period of the system, the public grid is not overloaded and the system owner saves high electricity costs.

This is because the feed-in tariff is calculated much lower than customers pay for electricity from the public grid. Therefore, increasing self-consumption is also an absolute economic advantage.

"This change in the law is intended to create incentives to consume as much self-generated energy as possible yourself. It's a huge opportunity for people to become energy self-sufficient and at the same time help to protect the environment," admits Alexander Hannosette of GPC Europe, a Belgian photovoltaic company.

So how does this increase in self-consumption become possible?