Curious situation – “Paying to inject solar energy on top”

Christian Schmidt (58) from Wels (Upper Austria) has a photovoltaic installation at his home. And because the inventor and engineer is constantly optimizing his system, he often produces more electricity than he actually needs. In turn, it feeds the excess energy into the network of EWW, Wels’ energy supplier. And is paid for it. “Of course it’s not much. I won’t get rich, but I think it’s better than nothing,” Welser said in an interview with “Krone”.

Service costs cause problems
But lately, the joy of his “company” has somewhat clouded. “Unfortunately, I only noticed during this year’s billing that there has been a service charge for the redelivery since 2020,” says Schmidt. He discovered the small print mainly because an extra payment suddenly fluttered in the house this year (see excerpt from the bill). “Feed-in is reimbursed at 5.9 cents per kWh. With the service fee of one euro per month, in the current case this results in an additional payment of 12.25 euros,” calculates Christian Schmidt.

He cannot understand the whole thing. “Of course I only supply very little power to the grid, but I expected more finesse. I would actually be better off not feeding electricity back into the grid. Either I give away the excess electricity or I separate from the grid operator and run an isolated business,” says Schmidt.

E-Control is also powerless
The man from Wels also turned to the E-Control with his problem. The answer: “Energy suppliers are not obliged to purchase excess electricity. There are therefore no rules regarding remuneration. We can therefore only recommend that you compare whether there are other options for you.”