Anyone with panels on the roof knows the line item by now: terugleverkosten, the feed-in charge your supplier levies on the power you export to the grid. Since the first suppliers introduced them in 2024 they have generated a great deal of noise — court cases, a mass claim, parliamentary questions and an investigation by the regulator.
Now that the Dutch net metering scheme (saldering) ends on 1 January 2027, suppliers are announcing that feed-in charges will come down. That sounds like good news. It is just not the whole story.
What does the law actually say?
Less than you would expect. There is no legal cap on feed-in charges. They are simply permitted, with one important condition: they may only cover costs the supplier genuinely incurs to process the exported power. That is how the Dutch government states it, and the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) supervises it.
During the passage of the act that ends net metering, an attempt was made to arrange this differently. MP Postma tabled an amendment for an outright ban on feed-in charges. It did not pass. Another amendment did: the “reasonable payment” you receive for exported power from 2027 must, until 1 January 2030, be at least 50% of the bare supply tariff — the electricity rate excluding energy tax and VAT.
The two are separate things. The payment you receive, the charge you pay. They appear as separate lines on your bill, so you have to add them together to see what you are left with.
The ACM investigation: not unreasonable, but not comparable
In December 2025 the ACM published the outcome of its investigation. The conclusion landed badly with many solar owners: feed-in charges are not unreasonable relative to the costs suppliers incur. The ACM added that, if market conditions stay as they are, the charges will not rise further either.
The regulator was critical about something else: comparability. Suppliers bill these costs in all sorts of different ways. One uses an annual band based on how much you export, another a per-kWh amount, and a third quietly folded it into the standing charge for years. That last practice was partly because the old 2016 model contract had no separate component for feed-in charges at all.
The ACM has done something about that. The model contract that applies from 1 January 2026 — the standard offer every supplier is obliged to make — requires feed-in charges to be calculated per kilowatt-hour of exported power. The ACM considers that the right method for every other contract too, though there it cannot enforce it.
Why the charges fall in 2027
Here is the logic that usually gets skipped. Today's feed-in charges consist, roughly, of two parts.
The first part is imbalance and profile cost. On a sunny afternoon half of the Netherlands exports at the same moment, precisely when the market price is low or even negative. And the sun rarely shines exactly as forecast, so the supplier has to correct. That costs money.
The second part is tied to net metering itself. As long as you may net-meter, your supplier has to take that afternoon power back at the full supply tariff while being able to sell it on for far less at that moment. That gap is a real loss, and it sits inside the feed-in charge.
From 2027 the second part disappears. Hence suppliers being able to lower their rates — Greenchoice was the first to announce a concrete figure, a drop of about two thirds. But the first part remains: imbalance costs exist without net metering too, which is why feed-in charges will not go to zero.
And you still keep less
Work it through. Today an exported kilowatt-hour nets you around 5 cents — payment minus feed-in charge. From 2027 that net figure comes out below 1 cent per kWh at virtually every supplier.
That is not because the charges go up. It is because net metering itself goes away. Today an exported kilowatt-hour cancels one you import later, energy tax and VAT included. From 2027 you receive a payment on the bare tariff only — that statutory floor of 50% works out at somewhere between 5 and 7 cents per kWh at current prices — and the feed-in charge still comes off that.
Lower feed-in charges therefore do not mean you come out ahead. The conclusion almost everyone in the sector draws: the return shifts from exporting to self-consumption. Washing machine during the day, the charge point on the sunny hours, possibly a home battery.
The court cases: a different story than you think
In 2025 two Vattenfall customers made the news when the Amsterdam district court ruled that they did not have to pay feed-in charges. Earlier, a Budget Energie customer won on comparable grounds.
Worth knowing: those cases were not about whether feed-in charges are allowed. They were about this supplier introducing the charges halfway through a running contract, when nothing had been agreed about them at signing. Vattenfall itself points out that it did not respond to the claims, so the court never assessed them on their merits and the rulings apply only to those two customers.
A mass claim by Claimer.nl against several energy companies is now running. Separately, a case about price-variation clauses in variable contracts is before the Supreme Court, with a ruling provisionally expected at the end of 2026. That does not touch feed-in charges specifically, but it does touch the broader question of how free a supplier is to change tariffs mid-contract.
What to do with this in practice
Do not compare one number, compare the combination: feed-in payment minus feed-in charge, and only then look at the supply tariff. A supplier with a low feed-in charge and a thin payment can work out worse than the other way round.
Watch the contract type too. On most dynamic contracts you pay no feed-in charge at all — you simply get the market price of the moment, which is low on sunny afternoons but favourable at other times. And check the terms for whether your supplier reserves the right to adjust tariffs when laws and regulations change. Rather a lot changes on 1 January 2027.
Further reading: what replaces net metering, and a worked example for a 4.5 kWp roof.
Sources
- Salderingsregeling stopt in 2027 — Rijksoverheid.
- Terugleverkosten zonnestroom niet onredelijk, contracten wel moeilijk te vergelijken — ACM.
- Wet beëindiging salderingsregeling (36.611), including the amendments — Eerste Kamer.
- Amsterdam district court ruling on Vattenfall feed-in charges — Kassa (BNNVARA).
- Response to the court cases on feed-in charges — Vattenfall.
- ConsuWijzer — ACM, for neutral consumer information.
