Criticism on scrapping mandatory inspection for classical solar panel installations

Are you sure you are not wasting €100 000 per year on your energy budget?
For companies with an annual energy spend of around €2 million, commodity and non-commodity combined, savings are often hiding in plain sight.

In practice, organisations achieve an average saving of 8% on the commodity part of their energy budget. Not through luck or market timing, but through structure.

Those savings typically come from three levers:

    • Contract tendering
    • Click strategy
    • Invoice control

Yet one lever is underestimated.

Clicks without a strategy feel active, but reduce control.

Most click decisions happen reactively.
Prices rise. Budgets come under pressure. A click is made.

It feels like active management.
In reality, there is no predefined decision framework.

Each click becomes a one-off decision.
Uncertainty increases. Budget control decreases.

Depending on market conditions and risk profile, power and gas click moments makes up to a 20% difference in the commodity price.

“The misunderstanding about click strategy is that it’s a choice between fully fixed or fully floating. The real value lies in between. By aligning click moments with budget targets and risk appetite, you build a unit price that leaves room to benefit from market evolutions.”

Baudouin Vervrangen

Energy Partner, AYA

Volatility is not the enemy. Disorganization is.
Looking at historical forward prices, the same pattern repeats itself every year.
Within a single delivery year, electricity and gas prices often fluctuate by tens of percent.
This means the exact same volume can be fixed at very different prices within the same year.

- Companies that fix everything at once depend entirely on timing.
- Companies that spread decisions build their price step by step and end up closer to the market average.
- Organisations that take those decisions within a predefined framework consistently perform better than the average.

Not by predicting the market.
But by organising decisions.

A click strategy starts from your organisation.

A well-designed click strategy answers critical questions:
- How sensitive is your budget to price fluctuations?
- What level of risk is acceptable?
- Which volumes must be secured, and which can fluctuate?
- Over what time horizon are decisions spread?

These answers translate into a clear framework with predefined click moments, bandwidths and rules.
Without structure, volatility controls you.
With structure, volatility becomes a tool.

The Social-Economic Council of Flanders and the Environment and Nature Council of Flanders have criticized the plan of Minister Demir to abolish the obligation to organize a call for solar panels. The call system, which involves competitive bidding for subsidies, is currently mandatory for solar panel installations every six months. Demir’s proposal to suspend the call for the category of classical solar panels on roofs in 2023 was requested by branch organization ODE / PV-Vlaanderen to facilitate a faster rollout of solar panels. The council members warn that removing the obligation to organize the call could lead to a lack of predictability and the possibility of zero calls being organized before support is no longer necessary, thus delaying investment in sustainable energy projects. They also argue that the system could lead to oversubsidization, as it is not linked to unprofitable top.

In response, Minister Demir argues that the call system increases the competitiveness and profitability of installations, and that support should be granted through a competitive bidding process, according to the Guidelines on State Aid for Environmental Protection and Energy. The Minister also added an important amendment to her proposed regulation, stating that mandatory PV installations are not eligible for the call.