NOS News•
Four different power rates per day. That is one of the measures that must ensure that consumers start spreading their power consumption more over the day. That is what outgoing Minister Hermans of Climate today says in a letter to the House of Representatives. If they don’t, the power grid threatens not to be able to handle the peak pressure.
The plan is that the four rates will be introduced in 2028. People with a dynamic power contract already have experience with different rates during the day. For them, even a different flow rate applies every hour every hour, depending on how much supply of sun and wind energy and how much demand is expected. In the winter, with little sun, electricity is often the cheapest in the middle of the night. In the summer, with a lot of sun, often around noon.
Furthermore, there are often higher prices around the morning hours, when many people wake up and go to work. That is between around 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. And around the end of the afternoon, start of the evening. When people get home, charge electric cars, there is electric cooking and the heat pump is on to heat the house. That is roughly from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Four time blocks in 2028
The cabinet is still in conversation with the electricity networks that exactly will be the four time blocks with different rates. It is likely that there will be two more expensive blocks for the morning and evening and two cheaper blocks for during the day and at night.
“I think it’s good if people get a drop -off discount,” says Olof van der Gaag from the Dutch Association of Sustainable Energy (NVDE). “Everyone must be able to save money with it.”
All bits help to lower consumption at the peak times. So let the washing machine or dryer run in the middle of the night, or on a sunny day in the middle of the day, instead of at 6 p.m. the power peak can already reduce.
But according to Van der Gaag, it is especially important that the devices that really use a lot of electricity are switched on at other times.
Electric car and heat pump
In practice it is mainly about charging electric cars. “It is true that people often load their car when they come home. Around 6 p.m. you see a huge peak. And that can be done differently.”
That is also what Hanna van Sambeek, energy expert at the TNO research institute. “It is especially important that your cars are going to charge smarter. That takes relatively little trouble from the consumer and you can make big blows with it.”
A test in Amsterdam, which started earlier this year, already shows that a price stimulus works for consumers. People who load their electric car with a public pole can automatically have their loading session adjusted to the pressure on the power grid.
For example, they can indicate that their battery only has to be full at 8 o’clock in the morning. And for that they get a discount, which is on average 82 cents per charging session. Such a ‘smart’ loading session leads to a considerably lower electricity demand during peak hours.
In addition to the electric car, the heat pump will become increasingly important as a large power consumer of households. Because more and more houses are being heated instead of gas.
Milieu Centraal, for example, advises people with a heat pump and underfloor heating or good insulation not to lower their thermostat at night. “Because then the heat pump has to work hard in the morning to warm up the house again. That costs more energy than keeping the house up to temperature all night,” says Milieu Centraal.
Smart devices
In the letter to parliament, Minister Hermans also says much from smart devices. A smart heat pump can then, for example, enter into cheaper moments. “Smart devices should do especially what the user wants them to do,” says Van Sambeek van TNO. “You must be able to set a heat pump in such a way that, for example, it preheats for the more expensive peak hours and then have less heating during peak hours.”
According to her, it is especially important that people can easily set their preferences, for example in an app. And that a smart device arranges it automatically, without the consumer having a lot to worry about.
