Municipalities are annoyed

Kelag terminates PV contracts of Carinthian municipalities

Many feed solar power into the grid - including municipalities.(Bild: zVg)

Several municipalities have received a letter from the energy company - with less than pleasant news for the municipalities.

What private individuals are already familiar with is now also affecting several Carinthian municipalities: In a letter, Kelag informs municipalities that their power purchase agreement for photovoltaic systems will be terminated as of May 31, 2025. At the same time, a new tariff is being offered - albeit at less favorable conditions. This means that municipalities will receive less money in future for the solar energy they feed into the Kelag grid: "Kelag's 'eat or die' mentality towards the municipalities has little to do with partnership-based cooperation," says an annoyed Josef Ofner, Mayor of Hüttenberg.

Enormously good remuneration to date
"For the Kelag management, profit maximization is obviously more important than fair treatment of their long-standing Carinthian electricity customers," complains Erwin Angerer, Mayor of Mühldorf, who is also affected. Under the current tariff, the municipality receives 24 cents per kWh fed into the grid up to 500 kilowatt hours (kWh) and 6 cents if more than 5,000 kWh are fed back into the grid - an extremely good payment, by the way.

"We have offered our customers this graduated tariff for a very long time, even though the energy fed into the grid is worth much less on the market," argues Alexander Jordan, Head of Sales at Kelag. The termination was already communicated last year and all those affected will receive a letter by the end of February.

Two new models
There are two new dynamic feed-in tariffs: In future, customers will either be paid the price that the electricity is worth on the market in an hour or use the "solar value" tariff, where up to 1000 kWh is overpaid with a premium factor of 30 percent.

In some municipalities, people are still annoyed ...