Pluginvest adopts the use of CREG tariffs for the reimbursement of home charging sessions between employees and employers. Our CEO Sander Hereijgers and chairman of Charging Working Group at EV-Belgium explains below why it remains the best way for companies to reimburse their employees.
What is the CREG tariff?
Every month, the Commission for the Regulation of Electricity and Gas, CREG, publishes the average cost prices of electricity consumption in Belgium. They do this by region and for different types of customers. The average rate of electricity consumption among private individuals in Belgium is also published in this regard and can be found monthly in their 'board table'.
The current CREG tariff, as well as the tariffs of the past few months, you can find here .
Why use an average rate?
We believe that using the CREG tariff is the most transparent and fair method of compensating employees. This view is shared by EV Belgium, the industry federation of Charge Point Operators (CPO), and the majority of companies in our industry. By following this policy, employers avoid having to apply different rates for different employees. After all, you wouldn't do this for a bicycle allowance or other expenses either." explains Sander.
It is not fair to give employee A a different rate per kilowatt-hour than employee B, purely because they live in different locations in Belgium or because they generate their own energy through solar panels.
"Recently, there have been suggestions in the press for employees to have an additional energy meter installed at home by the grid operator. Adding such a meter is something that Fluvius, the grid operator in Flanders, has been offering for several years. However, this entails unnecessary social costs as the smart charging stations already contain integrated meters." explains our CEO.
These meters are very precise and strictly regulated in terms of accuracy. They can also be read remotely with the data integrated into your monitoring platform where you can consult all loading transactions.
This strikes us as a step backwards, rather than forwards, and something that will slow down rather than speed up the electric transition.
"Besides asking your employees to go electric, install a charging station at home and have it approved, you would then also insist as an employer to install an additional energy meter with them." argues Sander. "This strikes us as a step backwards, rather than forwards, and something that will slow down rather than speed up the electric transition."
In contrast to extra costs and inconvenience, Pluginvest is following recent innovations in the energy sector. Our high-voltage grid operator Elia, like Europe, provides a forward-looking solution here through its principle of energy blocks, which Pluginvest also endorses.
"With the digitisation and decentralisation of our energy landscape, we will increasingly need submetering (= measuring energy behind an existing meter) and settlement of different types of energy consumption and production at device level and without installing additional meters with unnecessary costs.
Vision of energy blocks
"Energy should be traded as freely as possible between different parties in smaller 'blocks'. Regardless of whether it is generated locally or centrally and where it is consumed." Sander further explains. "The end consumer should also be able to participate in this energy market operation as broadly as possible as a 'prosumer' (= both producer and consumer). This vision is also strongly supported by European authorities because this will strengthen market forces.’
This applies not only to local production of solar panels, for example, but also to the consumption and feed-in of your home battery, the operation of the heat pump and so many other new technologies. Your car battery is also part of this. If we start requiring end-users to have an extra kWh meter installed for each of these technologies, in practice we are preventing free access to these promising markets. It is a trajectory that destroys the potential of digitalisation in the energy sector.
We want to encourage grid operators to further roll out digital energy meters and fully embrace the opportunities offered by digitalisation.
What happens next behind this energy meter should be left to the free market. The market players who, with real innovation through digitalisation, internet-of-things, data communication and smart charging stations, can hereby lead to a real acceleration in the market. We will also be launching new products and services for this in the coming months, for which years of investment in data processing and IT development have already been made.
Therefore, we reiterate the call from Pluginvest to further embrace and also have the use of CREG tariffs confirmed from the administrations as the most forward-looking, transparent and technically feasible solution for home charging reimbursement.