Your Dutch energy bill explained

You have a Dutch energy bill in front of you and most of it is in a language you don’t read yet. Somewhere on it are the words jaarafrekening, termijnbedrag, netbeheerkosten and energiebelasting, and somewhere near the bottom is a number that is either a refund or a demand. In between sit two or three pages of tables that look like they should explain the number, but don’t – not unless you already know how the Dutch system is put together.

This page goes through that bill field by field: what each block of costs actually is, who sets it, and which parts of it you can do anything about. Every Dutch term is given with its English meaning the first time it appears. Keep your bill next to you – the headings below follow roughly the order in which the costs appear on it.

The four parts of every Dutch energy bill

Whatever supplier you are with, and whatever the layout of the document, a Dutch household energy bill is built from four cost blocks, with VAT (btw) charged on top of all of them.

1. Consumption charges (leveringskosten). What you paid for the energy itself: your electricity in kilowatt hours (kWh) multiplied by a rate per kWh, and your gas in cubic metres (m³) multiplied by a rate per m³. Note the unit for gas – the Netherlands bills gas by volume, not by kWh as the UK does, so a rate you remember from home is not directly comparable.

2. Fixed supply charge (vaste leveringskosten, sometimes still written as vastrecht). A standing charge per connection, usually per month, that you pay regardless of how much you use. There is normally one for electricity and one for gas.

3. Network charges (netbeheerkosten or nettarieven). The cost of the physical cables and pipes to your address, and of the meter. Your supplier collects this, but does not set it.

4. Energy tax (energiebelasting). A national tax per kWh and per m³, set by central government, plus a fixed annual reduction that works in your favour.

For context while you read your own figures: the average Dutch household used 2,430 kWh of electricity and 1,040 m³ of gas per year (CBS figure for 2024, published via Milieu Centraal). A flat with district heating and no gas connection will look nothing like that; a 1930s terraced house will often use considerably more gas. If you want to know whether your own consumption is unusual, there is a fuller breakdown by household size and property type here.

Termijnbedrag versus jaarafrekening

This is the distinction that causes the most confusion, and it is worth getting straight before anything else.

The termijnbedrag – also called the voorschotbedrag – is the fixed amount your supplier collects from your bank account every month. It is not a bill. It is an advance payment based on an estimate of what you will use over the coming year. Nobody knows in January what you will burn in February, so the supplier estimates, using either your own history or a standard profile for your type of address.

The jaarafrekening is the annual statement, produced once a year, that settles up. It takes your actual metered consumption for the period, works out what you actually owed across all four cost blocks above, subtracts everything you already paid in monthly advances, and shows the difference. Pay more in advances than you owed and you get money back (terug te ontvangen). Pay less and you get a demand (te betalen).

So the monthly amount leaving your account tells you almost nothing about whether your energy is expensive. Only the annual statement does.

What switching supplier changes – and what it doesn’t

Here is the part that no one explains to new arrivals, and it changes how you read the whole document.

Of the four blocks, only two are yours to negotiate: the consumption charges and the fixed supply charge. Those are set by your supplier, they differ from one supplier to the next, and they are what a comparison actually compares.

The other two are not. Energy tax is national and identical for everyone in the country. Network charges are set by the regional grid operator (netbeheerder) for your address and are identical at every supplier for that same address. Switching supplier does not reduce them by a cent.

This matters because a large share of a typical Dutch bill sits in those untouchable blocks. If you are trying to work out whether you are overpaying, the only meaningful exercise is to compare the supply component – rate per kWh, rate per m³, and the standing charge – and to ignore the rest, which will follow you wherever you go. That is also what a side-by-side comparison of current offers is for.

Energy tax and the reduction that surprises everyone

Energiebelasting is charged per unit consumed, on both electricity and gas, and appears as its own line on the bill. Against it sits a credit called the vermindering energiebelasting – the energy tax reduction.

For 2026 this reduction is €519.80 excluding VAT per electricity connection per year, which is roughly €629 including VAT (source: Rijksoverheid, opbouw energierekening). Three things about it are worth knowing. It is the same amount for every household, whether you use a great deal of energy or almost none. It is applied automatically – there is nothing to claim. And if the reduction is larger than the energy tax you owe, the difference is paid back to you.

On your statement it will normally appear as a negative amount, which is why one line of the bill is sometimes a credit of several hundred euros. That is not an error.

Network charges and your grid operator

Your netbeheerder is the company that owns the cables and pipes to your building. It is not your supplier, and you cannot choose it: your address determines it. There are six regional grid operators serving Dutch households – Liander, Stedin, Enexis, Coteq, Rendo and Westland Infra. It is possible to have one operator for electricity and a different one for gas.

The charge covers transport, the connection itself (aansluiting) and metering. Because it is billed through your supplier under what is known as the supplier model, it looks like a supplier cost – but the tariff is fixed by the grid operator and is the same at every supplier for that address. You can look up which operator serves your postcode at mijnaansluiting.nl.

Meter readings, smart meters and normaaltarief / daltarief

The consumption on your annual statement comes from meter readings (meterstanden). A smart meter (slimme meter) sends these automatically, so you normally do nothing. With an older meter you have to submit the readings yourself when your supplier asks, usually once a year – and if you don’t, the supplier estimates, which is how people end up with a statement that bears no relation to reality.

Many homes have a dual-rate electricity meter with two counters: normaaltarief, the standard rate, and daltarief, the off-peak rate that applies at night and at weekends. On the bill you will see two separate readings and two separate rates. Check that both were read; a missed off-peak reading is a common source of an odd-looking statement.

When you move house, take a photograph of the meter on the day you get the keys. It is the cheapest insurance available against being billed for the previous occupant’s use.

When the annual statement goes against you

A large te betalen amount usually means one of three things: your advance was set too low for your actual use, your consumption genuinely rose, or the readings used were estimates rather than actual.

Work through it in that order. Compare the readings on the statement with your meter now. Check the period covered – a statement covering fourteen months rather than twelve will look alarming. Then check whether the consumption figures are marked as actual or estimated. If they are estimated, submit real readings and ask for a corrected statement.

If the advance was simply too low, raise it. Most suppliers let you adjust the termijnbedrag yourself in your online account, and doing so after a cold winter is sensible rather than defeatist: a monthly amount set below your real use is a debt accumulating quietly until the next statement. The reverse is also true – an advance set far above your use is an interest-free loan to your supplier, and you are entitled to lower it. Comparing your advance against where market rates currently sit is a reasonable annual habit.

Solar panels: teruglevering on the bill

If you have solar panels, electricity you export to the grid is teruglevering – feed-in. Your bill shows consumption from the grid and export to the grid as separate figures, taken from separate readings on the meter.

Saldering is the netting arrangement under which exported electricity is offset against imported electricity before the bill is calculated. That arrangement ends on 1 January 2027. Up to and including 31 December 2026 it applies unchanged; from 1 January 2027 the offsetting stops and households instead receive a feed-in payment (terugleververgoeding) of at least 50% of the bare supply rate, a legal minimum that applies until 2030. Suppliers may pass on only the costs they actually incur to process exported electricity, and the ACM supervises both figures. What this means for your bill and your contract is set out in full on our page about the end of net metering.

Glossary: the Dutch words on your bill

Frequently asked questions