Back to Insights
Ecologie en energie?
The capacity charge, a necessary evil
The new year is traditionally accompanied by new legislation. For example, we recently learned about the Flemish capacity rate. Not only households, but also industry/retail are encouraged to spread the load on the electricity grid. The new network tariff is based on three aspects.
1. Access power
Based on your company’s consumption profile, you determine in advance the power that you expect not to exceed.
2. Monthly peak
The highest average power, measured per quarter of an hour.
3. Exceeding rate
If your monthly peak is higher than the specified access power, you will be charged an excess rate. For 12 months you pay a rate on the difference between the two that is 50% higher than the access power.
At Sabcobel we look over your shoulders to ensure that installations run as efficiently (and therefore cheaply) as possible. We do this in three ways:
1. Informing and raising awareness
On our website we provide detailed text and explanations, including a podcast. We want to introduce our customers and employees to the rate.
2. Collecting data
Using figures about general consumption and the consumption of the installation, we can determine what the role of the installation is in the peak load. If more than 50% of the consumption can be accounted for by the installation, we must further analyze these settings. An energy meter can also contribute to more insights.
3. Energy accounting
The figures from phase 2 are used to make determinations about the customer’s major consumers. This could, for example, involve too many electrical defrostings during the same period of time. A timeline with peak times is also drawn up, which the customer can adjust his consumption accordingly.
Reactive energy – the energy that is not used to run an installation and is therefore lost – can also cause higher costs. Where people used to look at the difference between the inductive (coil operation) and capacitive (capacitor operation) load on the one hand and the active energy on the other hand per month, these differences will now be calculated per quarter of an hour. Both taxes will also be compared separately.