Home battery or smart-charging your electric car on solar power: which pays off more after 2027?

Short answer: if you have solar panels and an electric car, smart charging is usually the cheapest way to use more of your own solar power from 2027. You use the battery you already have, and according to Milieu Centraal it has about the same effect on your self-consumption as a home battery. A home battery costs thousands of euros and, in recent research, only pays back in 10 to 22 years, with a lifetime of 10 to 15 years. For backup power, or if your car is rarely at home during the day, a battery can still make sense. Neither choice changes your ERE payment.

Why this choice matters from 2027

The Dutch net-metering scheme (salderingsregeling) ends on 1 January 2027 (Staatsblad 2025, 17). You can then no longer offset exported solar power against the electricity you draw from the grid in the evening. The gap between using and exporting your solar power then drives your bill:

• Using it yourself saves you the full kWh price, because according to the Dutch government you pay no taxes and no supplier costs on electricity you generate and use directly. In August 2026 that averaged about €0.258 per kWh, including energy tax and VAT (CBS).
• Exporting it earns, until 2030, at least half the bare supply tariff: roughly €0.061 per kWh before feed-in costs. For fixed and variable contracts, Milieu Centraal works with net amounts of roughly 0.5 to 1.25 cents per kWh.

So every kWh of solar power you use instead of exporting is worth about €0.197 to €0.253. What your supplier pays and charges is covered in feed-in costs 2027 by supplier; the background is in end of net metering 2027.

Car battery or home battery: the effect on self-consumption

According to Milieu Centraal, an electric car has a 60 kWh battery on average, a home battery 2 to 20 kWh. Yet the effect is about the same: with smart charging or with a home battery, the share of your solar power you use yourself rises from around 30% to over 50%. On an average June day, 10 panels generate about 15 kWh, while a standard home battery stores 6 kWh. A car battery can easily absorb a day like that; the real limit is whether the car is at home.

For the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, CE Delft and Witteveen+Bos modelled what a battery does for two households with 3,500 kWh of solar power a year:

Share of solar power you use yourself	No battery	5 kWh battery	10 kWh battery
Household with solar panels	25%	50%	60%
With solar panels, heat pump and electric car	54%	77%	90%

The household with a heat pump and car already reaches 54% without a battery, more than the solar-only household with a small battery. A battery still helps on top of that, but there is less left to capture: without a battery, the household with a car exports 1,780 kWh a year according to the same report, against 2,660 kWh with solar panels only.

What does it cost?

Home battery. Research by CE Delft for Vereniging Eigen Huis (January 2026) lists these prices, including VAT and installation: €1,400 to €2,500 for a 2.7 kWh plug-in battery, €3,500 to €5,000 for 5 kWh and €6,000 to €9,000 for 10 kWh. There is no national subsidy (Milieu Centraal). In a test home with average consumption, a 5 kWh battery saved €350 a year on a fixed contract and €217 on a dynamic contract without net metering. At €3,500 the researchers estimate a payback of 10 to 22 years, with a lifetime of 10 to 15 years. They conclude that the energy bill goes up after net metering ends, even with a battery. About 15% of the stored electricity was lost, and in three test homes costs actually rose because of incorrect settings.

Smart charging. You need no extra battery: you control the timing and charging speed so the car charges when there is solar power to spare (Milieu Centraal). If your charge point or its app can make the charging power follow your solar surplus (check your model’s specifications), this costs nothing extra. With a dynamic energy contract, charging can also follow the hourly price. Note that a smart charge point also needs an integrated MID meter to earn ERE; see when a smart charge point is suitable for ERE and the chargers by brand.

Smart charging and a home battery side by side

	Smart charging on solar power	Home battery
Purchase cost	No battery; only a charge point or app that controls charging	5 kWh: €3,500 to €5,000; 10 kWh: €6,000 to €9,000
Extra self-consumption	From around 30% to over 50% (Milieu Centraal)	Also from around 30% to over 50% (Milieu Centraal); 25% to 50% or 60% (CE Delft)
Lifetime and risk	No extra device; you use the battery you already have	Lifetime 10 to 15 years, payback 10 to 22 years, about 15% loss, risk of incorrect settings
Fire safety	No extra storage in the home	Milieu Centraal advice: well-ventilated spot, not in a walkway or escape route, smoke and carbon monoxide alarm nearby
Effect on ERE	None	None
Works when the car is away	No	Yes

Worked example: smart-charging 1,000 kWh versus a 5 kWh battery

These are the assumptions:

• You have solar panels and charge 4,000 kWh a year at home, through a charge point with an integrated MID meter.
• Smart charging: you shift 1,000 kWh of that to hours with a solar surplus, for example at weekends or on work-from-home days. Your charge point or app can already do this, so no extra investment.
• Electricity price: €0.258 per kWh including energy tax and VAT (CBS, August 2026), assumed unchanged in 2027.
• Feed-in: at the low end the statutory minimum compensation of €0.061 without feed-in costs, at the high end Milieu Centraal’s net 0.5 cents. A shifted kWh is then worth €0.197 to €0.253.
• Home battery: 5 kWh for €3,500, with the measured savings from the research for Vereniging Eigen Huis. Those come from a single test home with its own prices, so treat the comparison as indicative. We leave out maintenance, replacement and interest.

	Smart charging: 1,000 kWh on sunshine	5 kWh home battery
Extra investment	€0	€3,500
Savings per year	€197 to €253	€350 (fixed) or €217 (dynamic)
Payback	Immediate	10 years (fixed) or 17 years (dynamic)
Balance after 10 years	+ €1,970 to + €2,530	€0 (fixed) or - €1,330 (dynamic)
ERE, gross per year	about €612	about €612

The battery sometimes saves more per year, because it also powers your home with solar power in the evening. But after ten years smart charging has earned €1,970 to €2,530 without any investment, while the battery has at best just paid for itself by then. The two don’t simply add up either: if you charge smartly, less surplus is left for a battery. If you shift 500 kWh, it’s about €99 to €127 a year. The ERE is the same in both cases: 4,000 kWh × 0.33269 = 1,330.76 ERE, about €612 gross at €0.460 per ERE.

Where smart charging stops

• The car has to be at home while the sun shines. Weekends, work-from-home days and the summer months offer the most room. If you drive off every working day, you mainly catch weekend sunshine.
• In winter there is little to spare. On an average December day, 10 panels generate about 2.5 kWh according to Milieu Centraal. That applies to a battery just as much.
• Your car can’t power your home yet. According to our overview of bidirectional charging, no model in the Netherlands offers vehicle-to-home (V2H) yet. Feeding back is currently only allowed with fixed, registered combinations of car, charger and energy supplier; according to the cabinet, that grid code barrier will be solved in 2029. Electricity the car feeds back earns no ERE (Energy for Transport Regulation, art. 9).

What could still change

• Time-of-use network tariffs. The ACM expects to decide by the end of 2026 on network tariffs that vary by time of day; grid operators can introduce them from 2029. Using electricity outside the evening peak then becomes worth more, with a battery and with smart charging.
• Grid-congestion payments. According to the cabinet, households in Gelderland, Utrecht and parts of the Flevopolder and Noord-Brabant can receive a payment of up to hundreds of euros a year for smart control of charge points, home batteries and hybrid heat pumps.
• Trading with a battery. According to the cabinet, the imbalance market has become less attractive for home batteries.

Your ERE payment: no difference

For home chargers the NEa uses a fixed renewable share: 50.5% in 2026, good for 0.33269 ERE per kWh. The number of kWh comes from the integrated MID meter in your charge point, mandatory for private individuals since 1 January 2026. Whether those kWh come straight from your roof, from a home battery in the evening or from the grid makes no difference. At €0.460 per ERE (median of named sources, as of 18 October 2026), that’s about €0.153 gross per kWh, before commission. Why your own generation doesn’t raise the percentage is explained in ERE and solar panels at home; work out what you keep net with the earnings calculator.

Conclusion: which step first?

For most electric drivers with solar panels, smart charging is the cheaper first step: no purchase, about the same effect on your self-consumption and no extra device in the home. A battery can still make sense if:

• your car is rarely at home during the day and you use little electricity in daytime;
• you want backup power: that only works with a battery that has a special backup function, sometimes with a change to your fuse box;
• you live in a region with a grid-congestion payment, or once time-of-use network tariffs arrive.

If you are thinking of a battery that plugs into a socket, read plug-in batteries: safe and worthwhile?. Run the numbers for your situation with the home battery calculator and the EV cost scan before you decide.