This will cause excitement! Energie AG Oberösterreich is terminating the PV feed-in contracts of approximately 20,000 customers to whom it previously guaranteed a minimum of 15.73 cents per kWh. Instead, they are offered a new rate based on the reference market.
The directors of Energie AG Oberösterreich Vertriebs GmbH, Klaus Dorninger and Alexander Marchner, announced this step on Tuesday. For April, those affected would have received 3.12 cents with the new contract.
More and more other companies are offering dynamic rates, and that’s what EAG wants to do now, Marchner said. The new rate is called “Team Sonne Loyal Float” and is based on the reference value for PV that E-Control publishes monthly for the previous month. A discount is deducted from the determined market value, but this is suspended until the end of the year. The rate is capped downwards, the minimum payment is 2 cents per kWh – provided you get electricity from EAG.
Those involved receive written information
The affected nearly 20,000 PV system owners will receive written information in the coming days that their contracts will be terminated at the end of June, the EAG announced. These are customers who concluded the contract in the high price phase in mid-2023. The terminations are considered legally watertight. In addition, there are 6,000 to 7,000 customers with newer contracts who currently receive 4.5 cents. Your contracts remain valid for the time being. New contracts can only be concluded according to the float rate.
More is produced than consumed
The company calculates that peak electricity consumption in Upper Austria is currently 1.8 GW, and that peak PV generation will increase to 2 GW by the end of the year. So more is produced than consumed. The surplus must be sold on the international market at market prices. The price fluctuates within a very short time depending on the supply. “This is an issue that concerns us enormously as suppliers,” says Dorninger. Because the number of PV systems is increasing. Since 2023, approximately 3,000 photovoltaic systems have been installed monthly in the EAG network area.
Massive PV Tree
The background is that PV systems have boomed since the Russian attack on Ukraine, due to the geopolitical situation and high subsidies. Many have been expanded considerably and – in the hope that it will also be financially profitable – often yield much more than the networks can tolerate. For Robert Tichler of the Energy Institute of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, the gold rush mood is now over, which he does not consider negative at all, as he speaks of “unjustifiably high additional income” in connection with the subsidy-driven PV boom and points out insisted that the systems would still pay off quickly – perhaps now in 15 years instead of four, which is certainly justifiable with a 25 year lifespan, but there is no longer “a second family income”.
New contract
The directors of Energie AG Oberösterreich Vertriebs GmbH, Klaus Dorninger and Alexander Marchner, announced the big step on Tuesday. For April, those affected would have received 3.12 cents with the new contract.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
