Why BEE is Belgium’s leader in smart solar energy management

4 ways to manage your solar panels

In today’s energy market, there are several ways to handle solar production:

1. No curtailment: a traditional PV installation without any control.
2. Day-Ahead Curtailment: only avoids negative day-ahead prices. This often results in significant curtailment of solar production.
3. Full Imbalance Curtailment: always injecting on the imbalance market (zero nomination). This leads to substantial curtailment, price risk, and potential conflicts with the grid operator for large volumes.
4. BEE HIVE Curtailment: an advanced strategy for smart solar management. Intelligent nominations and decisions: we aim for positive day-ahead prices, and when negative day-ahead prices are predicted by our advanced algorithm, we inject on the imbalance market. Curtailment is only activated when both markets are negative! This way, we create maximum value!

Make the most of your solar panels

When you invest in solar energy, you want your panels to produce as much green energy as possible. Curtailment should always be the very last option. With simplified curtailment strategies, such as Day-Ahead or Full Imbalance curtailment, you can lose between 20% and 40% of your injected volume. With our ‘best of both worlds’ approach via BEE HIVE, this loss is often kept below 10%, with a maximum of 20% curtailed volume during the sunny months.

The customer data in the chart below clearly shows how BEE HIVE makes the difference.

And what does this mean financially?

The value of smart management is closely linked to the number of times electricity prices turn negative. To make a fair comparison, we look at the average revenue per MWh produced, as if all solar energy had actually been generated. If we only consider the volume that wasn’t curtailed, we would get an overly optimistic picture.

The results clearly show that the BEE HIVE approach performs best:

• BEE HIVE: 48 €/MWh
• Day-ahead curtailment: 35 €/MWh
• No curtailment: 31 €/MWh

For the last two strategies, the actual value is even lower, as they also face negative imbalance prices (around €15/MWh).

Conclusion

With smart BEE HIVE management, we combine optimal yield with minimal loss. We only intervene when it’s truly necessary – and it pays off. The result: more green energy, higher value, and less curtailment.