The small energy supplier Energie.be will not charge its customers for electricity consumed on Sundays between noon and 16:00 from March to the end of September.
This is a first for the Belgian market, De Tijd reported on Thursday. The initiative, named Energy Sundays, offers a solution for green energy that might otherwise be wasted.
Co-founder and co-CEO Tom Van Den Bosch explained, "Excess green energy is a risk on sunny spring and summer days during weekends or holidays."
He added that businesses use less energy at these times, and fewer people are at home to benefit from cheap, green electricity.
Furthermore, a large surplus of electricity is not good for the grid, which needs to be balanced. Currently, large solar panels are temporarily shut off, and wind turbines are halted to prevent overproduction.
Unfortunately, this leads to a significant amount of clean energy being wasted. To encourage customers to shift their consumption, they will pay 0 euros for electricity on Sunday afternoons in the spring and summer months. However, this does not mean electricity is entirely free at those times.
In a typical electricity bill in Flanders, the actual cost of electricity accounts for about 41% of the total.
The remaining costs include network fees, taxes, and VAT, which customers still need to pay. 5,000 customers have already signed up for the initiative.
