From July 1, according to the draft amendment of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, the rules for settling home photovoltaics will change. New prosumers will enter a new model, while current ones will be able to choose. What will be more profitable for them?
This is yet another change in the home photovoltaics billing system prepared by politicians in recent years. The change will not affect solar installations launched before April 1, 2022, which are settled under the “old rules” in the net-metering framework. These prosumers can still freely feed excess energy into the grid and then retrieve 70-80% of this energy for free at any time over the next 12 months, just as before.
However, prosumers who launched PV installations from April 1, 2022, are currently billed under the net-billing system. They sell excess energy to the grid at market prices and purchase any additional energy they need from the grid at regular rates, like any other consumer.
The current selling price of energy surplus is a monthly price (RCEm) provided by the Polish Power Grid Operator after the end of the month. In reality, it’s a monthly average of spot market prices (RDN) weighted by the volume of electricity introduced into the grid by all photovoltaic installations in Poland.
Therefore, prosumers have a single rate for the entire month, but it is a rate that takes into account the fact that most energy from photovoltaics is fed into the grid during the day when selling prices are low. The RCEm rate is currently much lower than the average daily energy prices in the country. In April 2024, RCEm was 25 gr/kWh, while the average price on the Polish exchange reached 36 gr/kWh.