Energy literacy
Smarter choices for your flex future.
Practical guides for the Dutch household — meters, dynamic contracts, solar, and the equipment that listens to the price.
Pros and Cons of Dynamic, Fixed and Variable Energy Contracts in Europe
Spot-linked, locked-in, or somewhere between. A field guide to the three tariff shapes that decide whether your bill is a forecast or a gamble.
Read the article01 · Foundations
The vocabulary of your energy bill.
How to find your EAN number in the meter cabinet (Netherlands)
Eighteen digits printed on every Dutch utility bill — and the single piece of information every comparator, supplier, and grid operator asks for first.
How to Get Your Slimmemeterportal API Key
A practical walkthrough for pulling your 15-minute data out of the Dutch smart meter portal — without surrendering it to a third-party app.
How to find your annual energy usage
Why "annual usage" is a moving target, where to find the number your supplier actually uses, and how to sanity-check it against your own meter.
02 · Dynamic & Variable Contracts
Where your tariff meets the wholesale market.
The Myths About Dynamic Energy Contracts in Europe
Six stories Dutch households keep telling each other about dynamic energy. We hold them up to the actual market data and check which still stand.
How tomorrow’s price is decided at 12:55
Every day at 12:55 CET, an auction quietly decides what your dynamic tariff will charge tomorrow. Here is what actually happens in those four minutes.
03 · Solar & Self-consumption
After saldering, the maths changes.
Net Metering in the Netherlands: What Changes Mean for Solar Households
Saldering is ending. What replaces it is not one rule but a patchwork — and the payback maths your installer quoted last year no longer applies.
After saldering: a worked example for 4.5 kWp
A worked example for a typical 4.5 kWp Dutch roof — before and after 2027. Where the payback comes from when net metering is no longer doing the lifting.
04 · Equipment & Flex
Hardware that pays attention to the price.
A home-battery worksheet that uses your real spread
Forget the brochure payback. The real question is the spread between your peak and trough spot prices, and how many full cycles your contract lets you bank.
Smart EV charging when 03:00 is no longer the answer
Why charging at 03:00 is no longer automatically cheapest, and how to align a 40 kWh weekly recharge with whichever six-hour window the wind actually shows up.