Vattenfall imposed solar feed-in charges with no contract basis — court barred them

Since July 2024, Vattenfall has charged fixed feed-in fees to customers with solar panels who supply electricity back to the grid, arguing that feeding power in creates costs that should be carried by the customer group that causes them. One customer with sixteen solar panels went to Amsterdam subdistrict court seeking a ban on the charges.

The court found no contractual basis: no general terms and conditions applied to the feed-in agreement, the customer had not been clearly told when signing that feed-in charges might be introduced later, and it was unclear that the feed-in remuneration included a cost component. The judge granted the ban, holding that a supplier cannot simply add charges retrospectively without a contractual basis.

The ruling is deliberately narrow: it applies to this agreement and is not a general ban on feed-in charges, nor an automatic refund entitlement for other solar owners — each contract decides. The judge also held that the legislated end of the Netherlands net-metering scheme on 1 January 2027 does not affect the assessment of this existing agreement.

Feed-in charges barred for the plaintiff; no fine, but suppliers must now check each contract before charging for grid feed-in.

Vattenfall introduced the fee for existing customers although the feed-in agreement and its general conditions contained no basis for it.

Customers were never clearly told when concluding the agreement that feed-in charges could be introduced later.

The charge was imposed unilaterally and retrospectively on existing agreements — the exact move the court prohibited.

New fees need a contractual hook: charging existing customers for something their signed agreement never mentioned invites a court to undo it term by term.

The ban covers this customer only; the court said nothing about whether feed-in charges as such are reasonable. Vattenfall maintains on its own information pages that feed-in costs are real and should be allocated to solar customers, and it publishes the fixed charges there. From 1 January 2027 the net-metering scheme ends, pushing more Dutch solar owners toward feed-in contracts and making what those contracts disclose decisive. The ruling was reported 8 October 2026 and checked against the decision published on Rechtspraak.nl.