smart meter

By the end of 2025, installing a smart meter will be mandatory for PV-powered homes in Belgium’s Flanders region. According to grid operator Fluvius, a group of homeowners who installed solar panels between 2014 and the end of 2020 remain eligible for a retroactive investment premium.

The latest smart meter installation data for Great Britain reveals a slowdown in deployment. Suppliers have been tasked with providing three in four households with smart meters by the end of 2025 – failure could result in financial penalties.

A mixture of home-grown fossil fuels, possibly including fracked shale gas; clean power; nuclear; hydrogen; and smarter grids, apparently in that order, will make up the UK’s proposed energy security response in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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.

Energy regulator Ofgem has announced it aims to bring in market-wide half-hourly settlement across the retail electricity market – from October 2025. The long timescale reflects a sluggish attitude at an inconsistent regulator which appears to be planning an unpredictable route to net zero.

Solarpower Europe has called on member states to put solar and battery storage front and center when it comes to drawing up the Recovery and Resilience plans needed to secure a slice of the bloc’s proposed €672.5 billion post-Covid stimulus package.