Flanders

The Flemish government will halve the solar panels premium from a maximum of €1,500 ($1,594) in 2022 to €750 from Jan. 1, 2023. It will also end the home battery premium earlier than initially announced, from April 2023. The premium for heat pump boilers, on the other hand, will be retroactively doubled.

The Flemish Public Waste Agency said that solar energy deployment is one of the options on the table for the reuse of landfill sites.

Belgium’s latest renewables procurement exercise resulted in final prices for PV that ranged from €0.03 ($0.0316)/kWh to €0.06/kWh.

In the Belgian macro-region of Flanders, residential PV system owners that decided to install smart meters and abandon net metering are currently seeing their injection tariffs being paid at €0.11, up from just €0.03 in January. This gain adds to the high value of the kilowatt-hours they self-consume and it is helping them halve the payback time of their installations.

The procurement exercise’s final prices for the PV source ranged from €0.0321 to €0.15 per kWh. The next auction will be held in September.

The central European country had its best year in terms of new PV deployment in 2020 with around 1,010 MW of installed capacity. Its cumulative solar capacity surpassed 6 GW at the end of December.

The draft regulation has now been sent to the country’s Council of State for review. If approved, the new rules will grant prosumers the right to ask to postpone the installation of a smart meter until 2025. Furthermore, the Flemish government said it will also compensate PV system owners with a sum that should ensure a reasonable investment return of 5%.

A recent ruling of the Belgian constitutional court has canceled the 15-year grace period granted to residential PV system owners to keep operating under net metering despite the arrival of smart meters. The Flemish government said it will provide some compensation for the financial losses that this decision will cause.

Renewable energy production increased by 31% and now represents 18.6% of the country’s electricity mix. Its cumulative PV capacity increased from 3,887 MW at the end of 2019 to 4,788 MW at the end of December.

The authorities in Flanders will grant maximum rebates of €1,500 per PV system to homeowners from Jan. 1. The scheme is expected to drive up solar installations by 1.5 GW by 2025.