Energy & utilities · Austria · Solar / photovoltaic

Austria wants solar operators to pay for feeding in — while ÖMAG and EVN tariffs already collapsed below 9 cents.

Austria's energy regulator e-Control (Energie-Control Austria, the federal electricity and gas regulator) is preparing grid-use charges that photovoltaic plant operators will PAY on every kilowatt-hour they export. The proposal is stacked on top of an already collapsing payout: ÖMAG (the federal buyer-of-last-resort for renewable power) reset its market reference price down to about 5.8 ct/kWh in mid-2025, and EVN Sonnenstrom (the retail-supplier feed-in product run by Lower Austria's EVN) paid 8.13 ct/kWh for December 2025 — both well below the 2022 peaks operators built their pay-back maths on.

TL;DR

What hurts Austrian commercial photovoltaic operators (7–1000 kilowatt-peak class) face a fee on every exported kilowatt-hour just as the price they get paid for that same kilowatt-hour has roughly halved versus 2022.
How big ÖMAG market reference price at about 5.8 ct/kWh in mid-2025; EVN Sonnenstrom at 8.13 ct/kWh for December 2025; e-Control's own conference flagged grid-fee doubling over the next several years.
Why startups win Sell solar operators a battery and smart-meter package that holds the power back during the grid-fee hours (set by e-Control, Austria's energy regulator) and re-sells it later — paid out of the savings, under a long-term power-purchase contract (PPA). 5 self-marketing Austrian vendors cataloged below.

01The pain

"As long as the compensation (e.g. ÖMAG at 5.8 ct/kWh) stays higher than the feed-in fee, it makes economic sense for plant operators to feed power into the grid." — an Austrian PV operator on the Photovoltaikforum Österreich subforum, October 2024.¹ Every operator in the 7–1000 kilowatt-peak class is now running the inverse case through a spreadsheet.

Austria's energy regulator e-Control opened its "Netzentgelte Quo Vadis" public consultation in October 2024. From the regulator's own conference: average grid-use charges on the consumption side rose roughly 23% for 2025, with a similar doubling expected over the next several years, and variable per-kilowatt-hour charges on the feed-in side (Einspeisegebühren) are coming inside two to three years.¹ e-Control's argument: Austria's 400,000+ photovoltaic plants reduce the volume of power flowing through the network, so fixed costs spread across fewer kilowatt-hours.

The payout side has already moved. ÖMAG's published market reference price for photovoltaic feed-in was 6.772 ct/kWh in April 2026, down from the 2022 peaks; thread chatter through 2025 cites mid-year readings near 5.8 ct/kWh.² EVN Sonnenstrom (the standard retail-supplier feed-in contract for Lower Austria) paid 8.13 ct/kWh for December 2025.³ Stack the two changes and the export side of a commercial Austrian roof flips from positive revenue to negative.

ÖMAG ~5.8 ct/kWh paid. e-Control fee on every kWh fed in. Math inverts.

"As long as the compensation stays higher than the feed-in fee, it makes economic sense to feed into the grid." — Austria · Photovoltaikforum Österreich · 2024–2025

02Who solves this today

Five Austrian-market vendors that publicly market themselves as solving the gap the e-Control feed-in fee plus ÖMAG/EVN tariff collapse opens — hourly dynamic-tariff supply, photovoltaic energy management with battery and hot-water diversion, power-to-heat surplus use, virtual-power-plant participation for plants above 100 kilowatt-peak, and hybrid inverter plus battery hardware. Each homepage was checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow.

aWATTar

Vienna-based hourly dynamic-tariff electricity supplier. Homepage markets HOURLY (a tariff that updates the per-kWh price every hour off the EPEX SPOT day-ahead curve), SUNNY and SUNNY Spot 60min, plus integrations with tado°, Panasonic, neoom and Fronius Wattpilot — the pairing that lets an Austrian household chase low-price midday hours instead of bleeding revenue when the ÖMAG payout falls.

awattar.at

SMARTFOX

Tyrolean energy manager (DAfi GmbH). Homepage markets the SMARTFOX Pro energy manager, the SMARTFOX Pro Charger 2 wallbox, the Pro Heater hot-water diverter, battery-storage integrations and an in-house dynamic electricity tariff — the exact stack that pushes Austrian self-consumption up and feed-in down when the ÖMAG price falls below the grid charge.

smartfox.at

my-PV

Upper-Austrian power-to-heat specialist. Homepage markets photovoltaic-direct hot-water, space-heating and combined hot-water-plus-electric-vehicle solutions, including SOL•THOR (a hybrid photovoltaic heater) — the way an Austrian roof sinks surplus midday production into a hot-water tank instead of feeding it into the grid at 5.8 cents and being charged for the privilege.

my-pv.com

Next Kraftwerke Österreich

Vienna-based virtual-power-plant operator (Austrian arm of the Cologne group). Homepage markets Direktvermarktung (selling a plant's output on the wholesale market), Regelenergie (balancing-reserve services), and a Mein Kraftwerk operator portal for hydro, wind, biogas, photovoltaic, combined-heat-and-power and battery assets — the licensed-trader function that monetises commercial Austrian roofs above 100 kWp outside the ÖMAG payout.

next-kraftwerke.at

Fronius

Upper-Austrian inverter and storage manufacturer. Homepage markets the GEN24 Plus hybrid inverter, Verto Plus commercial inverter, Reserva and Reserva Pro battery storage, the Solar.web monitoring and energy-management platform, plus the Wattpilot smart wallbox — the European-made hardware-and-software pairing that lets an Austrian household or commercial site shift consumption around the new grid charge.

fronius.com

Adjacent vendors were considered. 1KOMMA5° operates in Austria but its public landing page redirects to its German market site, so it is excluded from this Austria-specific list pending a verifiable Austrian product page. neoom (neoom.com), a Carinthian energy-platform vendor, is referenced as an aWATTar integration partner rather than catalogued separately here; a standalone listing is planned once a direct homepage check lands. EVN (evn.at) and Wien Energie (wienenergie.at) are referenced in section 01 as feed-in counterparties, not third-party solution providers. ÖMAG (oem-ag.at) is the federal renewable-power buyer-of-last-resort cited in section 01 as a source of the market reference price, not a solution provider. e-Control is the regulator setting the rules, not a vendor.

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Operators discussing this

These are real Austrian solar operators talking about this pain in their own words on the Photovoltaikforum Österreich subforum. They are the reason this page exists.

«Ich gehe davon aus das jede anlage die mehr als 7 kw Leistung angemeldet hat auch da führ zahlen aus ( es ist ja viel einfacher)»

"I assume every plant registered above 7 kW will be made to pay for it too — that's much simpler [for the regulator]."

jetzt wird es ernst, zahlen für einspeisen · Photovoltaikforum Österreich — thread opened 1 July 2025; reached page 99 / post #981 by 22 November 2025; at least three distinct Austrian operators (sonnenversteher, bigwindow, mh-privat) discussing the e-Control grid-fee proposal on the latest page alone.
«Solange die Vergütung (z.B. OeMAG mit 5,8 ct/kWh) höher ist als die Einspeisegebühren, ist es für Anlagenbetreiber wirtschaftlich sinnvoll Strom ins Netz zu speisen.»

"As long as compensation (e.g. ÖMAG at 5.8 ct/kWh) stays higher than the feed-in fee, it makes economic sense for plant operators to feed power into the grid."

e-Control - Netzentgelte Quo Vadis ? (& 2025 Gebühren) · Photovoltaikforum Österreich — started October 2024 around e-Control's "Netzentgelte Quo Vadis" conference; four operators tracking the proposed feed-in fee against their ÖMAG and EVN tariff yields, paired with the July 2025 thread above this gives a multi-quarter arc.