Just turn on your laundry: this afternoon, electricity consumption will save you money

Want to earn money by doing laundry or charging your electric car? It may sound too good to be true, but it really is possible on Saturday. Instead of having to pay for electricity use, you will receive money between one and four o’clock on Saturday afternoon. At least, if you have a so-called dynamic energy contract.

With a dynamic contract, the price for electricity is determined per hour. This is in contrast to a fixed or variable contract, where a fixed price per kilowatt hour is agreed for a certain period.

How is it possible that you get money and don’t have to pay?
We are dealing with negative electricity prices on Saturday. This happens often, but what makes it special this time is that the price for a kilowatt hour is so low that it is still negative, even including VAT and energy tax. A phenomenon that, according to energy company Zonneplan, will occur for the first time in 2022. On April 23 to be precise.

“The negative price is a result of a surplus of wind and solar power,” the energy company explained in an earlier article. It’s that time again on Saturday: the supply of electricity is greater than demand and, according to the company, this is reflected in negative prices, so you get money when you use electricity.

How is the electricity price determined?
The ANWB is one of the providers of such a dynamic energy contract. The organization previously explained that electricity for dynamic energy contracts is purchased on the energy market known as the spot market. “Different prices apply every day, depending on supply and demand. As a result, the price for a kilowatt hour can even be negative for some hours. A negative hourly price does not occur with a fixed or variable energy contract.”

According to the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), one million households in the Netherlands have a dynamic energy contract for gas or electricity. If you have a dynamic energy contract and solar panels, Zonneplan recommends planning your power consumption on Saturday afternoon between one and four o’clock as much as possible. Then you consume as much of the power that your panels generate yourself. “After all, feeding back into the grid during those hours costs money,” the energy company explains.