An important sentence that clarifies the feed-in price
As we reported on it: Gergely Gulyás Gulyás, the Government Information Officer on Wednesday, said verbatim:
There is no fairer pricing than the fact that MVM buys electricity for the same price from a private individual who produced it with solar panels, as, say, from the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. So this is a fair settlement.
From this, we logically and professionally correctly drew the conclusion that they will be able to receive the electricity produced from household solar panels at a price of around HUF 13 from 2024 in the gross settlement system (fed-in energy fee). It is the Department of Energy Index however, his answer to his question shades this picture considerably, as he says that Gulyás understood that it is fair if MVM receives the supplied energy at the same price as the price for which MVM sells the electricity produced by the Paks Nuclear Power Plant to households as part of the overhead reduction . (Although the amount of electricity produced by the Paks Nuclear Power Plant is not “strapped”, directly connected with the electricity sold to the public by the MVM as part of the utility bill reduction, the reason for yesterday’s quote could be that the annual amount of electricity produced by the power plant roughly covers the amount annual amount of electricity, which is why it was possible to connect the two otherwise completely separate things on a “thought plane. It is rare that residential electricity consumption within a day exactly matches the amount of line-hour electricity produced by the power plant.)
The ministry gave this key answer to the newspaper’s request on the subject:
The most correct pricing is if MVM buys electricity from a private solar panel producer for the same price as it provides electricity produced by, say, the Paks nuclear power plant to a residential user.
From this point on, the picture is clear, because as part of the utility reduction, the MVM sells electricity (energy fee) to the population for approximately HUF 5, which, together with the system usage fees and VAT, adds up to HUF 36.
Thus, from 2024, the electricity supplied from households will be taken over to the gross settlement system at this HUF 5 price. And this is close to the lower edge of the band between HUF 0 and HUF 30 that arose during government meetings in recent weeks.
Uncertainties of interpretation still remain
With the above, one of the important parameters of the gross settlement system, which will start compulsorily from next year due to the EU directive, has been decided, but keeping many other parameters unchanged can still lead to very complex situations. Yesterday’s in the Hungarian Gazette published Energy Agency Decree 14/2023 repealed only two paragraphs of last November 18 From MEKH Regulation 13/2022and if the remaining several paragraphs are read together a 2016 MEKH decree and 2017 Wet. with an executive order, then otherwise a very complex system of rules emerges, for example for the distributor’s performance fee and the distributor’s (smart meter) traffic fee. And these, together, are still supported in principle for solar installations they can bring very handsome monthly financial results, if the rules and the underlying fee structure do not change by the end of the year.
According to Portfolio’s interpretation, the government decree and MEKH decrees announced yesterday can be interpreted as follows: the household that requests this, or initiates the expansion of its existing solar system after September 7, 2023, will already be included in the gross settlement system, in which the system usage fees proportional to the traffic must not be settled based on the difference between the amount of energy fed in and purchased each month, but separately for each direction -this has to be calculated separately every month and arranged financially. Thus, situations can arise when it becomes questionable how much can be saved from the monthly electricity bill with a solar system compared to if the household did not have such a system. All of this is verbatim in the new decree: in the indicated cases, “the traffic-related system usage fees must be settled and paid for each direction on the basis of the amounts of electricity separated and summed up per direction in the given accounting period”. Here, it is not specifically emphasized in the decree (in contrast to the annual balance) that it should be summed up annually for each direction, so based on the normal schedule of calculating traffic-related system usage fees, these fees must be calculated and accounted for in monthly stages.
By the way, if we take a step back in thought, and we are considering the new final rules of the annual balance system based on the MEKH decree 13/2023 published yesterday, then the issue of traffic-related system usage fees will also be a key issue. According to our understanding, the following currently follows from the rules: the household based on profile billing, which either already had a solar system by September 7, 2023, or by then announced its connection or expansion request and completes the commissioning before January 1, 2026, in their case, the system usage fees are the annual feed-in and annual customer must be calculated based on the difference in energy quantity (kWh) in forints. The new law stipulates that the difference in the amount of energy “must be formed based on the difference in the annual amounts”.
It is a big question as to what kind of math all this leads to in terms of finances in the case of households that fall substantially short of or exceed the actual annual consumption.
This is obviously also influenced by whether the same or different system usage fees apply to the supplied and purchased energy (probably the same, but it would be worth clarifying), and under what fee composition.
The other announcement was not entirely correct either
Not only was there a problem with the MVM feed-in charge sentence above in yesterday’s Government Info, but according to Portfolio’s information, the sentence announced by Gulyás regarding the lifting of the feed-in stop also needs to be clarified. The head of the Prime Minister’s Office said:
We will be able to restore the possibility of connection on the first of January. Not yet in the entire country, but approx. Only 7-8% of the country’s territory remains, where the network is not in such a condition that it can handle additional connections. In the other places, we will restore it on the first of January.
We understand that this 7-8% should be understood geographically, based on the total length of the network, which is the better/lower number of the two. If we look at the percentage of households that will not be able to feed into the grid in their own supply area even from January (thus there is no real point in installing a solar panel), then according to reliable information from Portfolio, it is double that, 16% .
Thus, 16% of Hungarian households will not be able to feed into the grid even from January, even though they would be entitled to settlement according to the annual balance, so in fact they will not even be able to proceed with the installation of the solar system.
Based on the new rules, not only households that applied before October 31 of last year would be entitled to the annual balance for ten years after joining, but also those who applied after that until September 7 of this year, who also form a large group: according to our information, about 25-30 thousand consumers it’s about These two groups can therefore hope that the development of the network in their own region is progressing quickly and that they will not miss the solar panel connection deadline of the end of 2025, which ensures the annual balance.
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