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Most businesses get one good drop in their energy bill. It arrives the year the solar panels go live, and then the line goes flat.

That flat line is not a sign of a bad installation. It is what happens when you have fixed the one cost component solar can reach. Reducing energy costs beyond that point means dealing with the components solar cannot touch: when you draw power, and how hard you draw it at your worst moment of the month.

TL;DR

The first phase of the energy transition was buying hardware. The second is making that hardware work as one system.

  • Solar reduces your supply costs. It does nothing for your network charge, which is set by your highest quarter-hour peak each month.
  • At a rate of roughly €3.66 per kilowatt (kW) per month, a 700 kW peak costs over €30,000 a year on the peak component alone.
  • Feed-in keeps getting less attractive. In the Netherlands, net metering for smaller connections ends on 1 January 2027.
  • Raising self-consumption, shaving peaks and shifting load deliver more together than any one of them does alone.
  • In simulations run on a full year of a site’s own metering data, energy-intensive sites come out at up to 60% lower energy costs.

You probably do not need more assets. You need control over the assets already on site.

Where your bill actually comes from

A commercial energy bill splits into roughly four blocks, and each one responds differently to solar.

  • 1
    Supply costs. The kilowatt-hours you buy, at a fixed or dynamic rate. This is the block solar hits directly.
  • 2
    Network charge. What you pay for using the grid. Part of it is fixed, tied to your contracted capacity. Another part is billed on the highest quarter-hour peak the grid operator measured that month. One spike on a Tuesday morning sets the rate for the whole month.
  • 3
    Energy tax and levies. Largely fixed, with rate bands that fall as consumption rises.
  • 4
    Feed-in. What you receive for power you export. That figure is under pressure, and on the sunniest afternoons the price can turn negative.

Solar reaches the first block. If most of your cost sits in the second and fourth, that explains why the bill dropped once and then stopped.

Six measures that take it further

You will probably recognise most of these. The difference is in how they are executed.

  • 1

    Control your peak.
    Almost always the quickest route. You cut costs without producing less, purely by stopping peaks from coinciding. Our article on peak shaving works through a full example, and there is a separate piece on reducing peak demand in manufacturing.

  • 2

    Consume more of your own generation.
    Every kilowatt-hour you use on site instead of exporting is worth double: no purchase, and no thin feed-in rate. In practice that means pulling flexible load towards the middle of the day where the process allows it. The case gets stronger now that the Dutch net-metering scheme ends on 1 January 2027 for smaller connections.

  • 3

    Storage, but with a job to do.
    A battery is not an objective in itself. It pays back once you know what it is for: shaving the peak, buffering surplus, or trading price spreads. Usually some combination, at which point control becomes the deciding factor. We set out the benefits of battery storage in an earlier piece.

  • 4

    Distribute charging properly.
    Chargers are often the largest new load on a site. Left alone, they all pull full power the moment a cable goes in. With load balancing for businesses you spread sessions across the night and across the headroom you actually have, without a single vehicle leaving late.

  • 5
    Shift load on price.
    Refrigeration, thermal storage, air compressors, charging sessions and certain batch processes all have slack in the timing. Use that slack to move into cheaper hours and your average price per kilowatt-hour falls without any change to the process itself.
  • 6

    Monetise your flexibility.
    If you have demonstrable controllable capacity, you can offer it through congestion management or trade it on the imbalance and day-ahead markets. At that point your energy system starts earning rather than only costing.

One note on heating plant and heat pumps. Including them in the schedule can deliver a lot, but we only do that in agreement with the building manager and inside the comfort limits you set yourselves. Never as a default.

smart-grid-zonnepanelen-slimmer-terugleveren
Generated with AI

Why standalone measures work against each other

This is where it goes wrong in practice. Each measure gets its own controller with its own rules, and none of those rules know about the others.

  • The battery charges itself full during the cheapest morning hour and sets a new monthly peak doing it.
  • The chargers start at 17:00, exactly when production is still running and generation is dropping off.
  • The inverters throttle on sunny afternoons because nothing on site is ready to absorb the surplus.
  • The building management system starts cooling at a fixed time, whatever the price is doing.

All four systems are doing precisely what they were set up to do. The total is simply more expensive than it needs to be. It is why a site with plenty of assets can end up paying more than a site with fewer assets and better control. The interaction between solar and a constrained grid is a good illustration of the same problem.

Where the cost sits varies by sector. On a manufacturing site the peak comes from start-up sequences and process steps landing together. Across a property portfolio it tends to come from heating, cooling and chargers running to their own schedules building by building.

From separate installations to one control plan

The answer is not more hardware. It is a layer above your existing installations that turns them into a single plan.

Tibo EMS looks 48 hours ahead at prices, weather and expected consumption, and recalculates the control schedule for every asset every five minutes. No fixed rules, and no dashboard anyone has to watch. It connects over MODBUS, OCPP or an interface to your building management system, so nothing needs replacing.

Tibo EMS als oplossing voor bedrijven
Generated with AI

Run the numbers before you install anything

We do not start with installation. We build a digital copy of your site first and run the control plan against your metering data from last year. What comes out is a calculation of what it would deliver in your situation, broken down by cost component. That figure is an indication based on your own data rather than a guarantee, and you decide afterwards whether to go further.

Want to know how much headroom is sitting in your connection and your existing assets? The simulation is the shortest route to an answer.

Frequently asked questions

It is, but the return has moved. Where the gain used to come from export, it now comes from self-consumption. Solar combined with control, and storage where it fits, performs better than solar on its own. There is more on this in our piece on smarter feed-in.

For almost any site on a large commercial connection, it is controlling the peak. It affects both your monthly peak charge and the risk of the grid operator raising your contracted capacity.

Not necessarily. A good share of the saving comes from shifting flexible load you already have, such as charging sessions, refrigeration and thermal storage. A battery widens the margin, but it is rarely the first step.

That depends on your connection. The scheme covers small connections, up to and including 3×80 amps. Ondernemersplein sets out what changes for smaller businesses. On a large commercial connection you were already outside it, which is why self-consumption has always been the better route.

Control starts working as soon as the assets are connected. The effect on your network charge shows up in the first full month, because that charge is billed monthly against your highest peak.

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