If you are shortlisting solar design software Netherlands installers actually use in 2026, you are buying a financial modelling engine that happens to draw roofs. The Dutch market has excellent irradiance data, short travel distances, high electricity prices and a rooftop stock that is largely flat commercial or steep tiled residential. What it does not have is a stable revenue model. The salderingsregeling, the net metering rule that made Dutch rooftop solar work for fifteen years, stops on 1 January 2027, and every quote you issue this year has to explain what happens on the other side of that date. The platform that wins our 2026 bench is SurgePV, a cloud-native all-in-one suite at roughly €1,180 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan. Below are the ten platforms Dutch installateurs genuinely shortlist, priced in euros, with honest limitations on each including ours. You can compare SurgePV pricing before you talk to a sales rep.
Direct answer. The best all-in-one solar design software for the Netherlands in 2026 is SurgePV, at about €1,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan (€5,900 for five seats). It ships NEN 1010 part 712 compliance flags on the generated single-line diagram, a financial engine that models the salderingsregeling running out on 1 January 2027 and the reduced feed-in payment after it, terugleverkosten as a real line item, flat-roof east-west ballasted layouts, 8,760-hour module-level shading and white-label Dutch proposals on every plan. For lender-grade yield reports on financed projects, PVsyst is still the document funders ask for by name.
This guide is written for installateurs, EPCs, adviesbureaus and in-house design teams shipping five or more projects a month. We rank ten platforms on four criteria: Dutch regulatory and tariff depth, engineering rigour, workflow coverage from address to signed offerte, and total cost of ownership in euros for a five-person team.
What Makes Dutch Solar Design Different
Five things, and four of them are financial or grid-related rather than optical. A tool built for the American or British market gets the physics right in the Netherlands and the money badly wrong.
The salderingsregeling stops on 1 January 2027. Under saldering, exported kWh are netted against imported kWh across the year, and the customer gets back the energy tax and VAT on every netted unit. That is why Dutch residential payback has been so short. From 1 January 2027 the rule ends in one step rather than tapering. Export is then paid at a supplier-set redelivery rate, with a legal floor of 50 percent of the net supply rate until 2030 according to the Rijksoverheid, and the energy tax refund disappears. A 25 year cash flow that applies saldering for the whole term overstates customer savings by a wide margin, and the error is largest on exactly the oversized south-facing systems that were the standard sale until recently.
Terugleverkosten are now a line item. Energy suppliers have started charging feed-in costs, billed as the cost of handling exported electricity, often as a fixed monthly amount that scales with how much the household exports. For a household with a heavily exporting array these charges can eat a meaningful share of the saldering benefit even before 2027. Most imported design tools have no field for a per-month charge tied to export volume, so the modeller ends up bodging it into an operations and maintenance line where nobody sees it.
NEN 1010 governs the electrical installation and NEN 7250 the building side. NEN 1010 is the Dutch low voltage installation standard, and its part 712 carries the additional requirements specific to PV installations, with the general rules in parts 3 to 6 applying as well. NEN 7250 covers the building integration of solar systems on flat roofs, pitched roofs and facades, including wind loading, internal condensation, temperature effects, fire safety, acoustics and thermal insulation. That second standard is the one that catches out foreign tools, because building-integrated and in-roof systems are common in Dutch new build and the mounting detail is a code question rather than a preference.
Netcongestie decides whether the project happens at all. Large parts of the Dutch network are full at peak. Around 15,000 large consumers are already on a waiting list for a new or heavier connection, waits in the worst regions run to several years, and from 1 July 2026 small consumers including households and small businesses join the same queue under an ACM prioritisation framework, as Netbeheer Nederland sets out. For a C&I rooftop the practical result is that export capacity, not roof area, sets the system size. Designs increasingly go out with a curtailment cap, a battery, or a non-firm transport contract, and the yield model has to reflect the clipping that follows.
Flat roof east-west ballasted layouts are the Dutch default. Dutch commercial roofs are flat, wind exposed and often weight limited. East-west back-to-back rows at 10 to 15 degrees pack more kWp onto the same area than south rows, flatten the generation curve, and reduce ballast because the arrays shelter each other aerodynamically. With saldering ending and export earning less than self-consumption, the flatter curve is now a financial argument as well as a packing one. A tool that models a flat roof as one big south-facing plane is producing a number nobody in this market will believe.
📘 Regulation note
A Dutch PV installation is wired to NEN 1010 including part 712, mounted to NEN 7250 for the building physics and wind loading, and connected through the local netbeheerder with the installation registered on energieleveren.nl. Systems above the small consumer threshold of 3x80A need a large consumer connection, which is also the gate for SDE++ eligibility. Check the current netcongestie map for the postcode before you promise an export capacity.
Bring one of your own sites to a free SurgePV demo. We will build the 3D roof from a satellite address, run the 8,760-hour shading simulation, and hand you the SLD, BOQ and branded proposal on the call.
Book a free SurgePV demo → Compare pricingWhy Dutch Firms Still Run PVsyst, PV*SOL and Polysun
This is the section sponsored roundups skip, so let us do it properly. The Netherlands is a small market next to two large ones, and Dutch engineering practice absorbed the German and Swiss toolchain long ago. PVsyst, PV*SOL premium from Valentin Software and Polysun from Vela Solaris all have real incumbency here, and it is not inertia.
Recognition at the receiving end. When a bank, an investor’s technical adviser or a verzekeraar opens a yield report on a financed commercial project, a PVsyst loss diagram is a document they have read hundreds of times. They know its assumptions and where to check it. On SDE++ backed projects with external finance this is a genuine advantage that no newer platform can simply claim away, and it is the strongest argument against switching.
Depth where Dutch engineering cares. PV*SOL’s 3D shading walkthrough handles the awkward dormers, chimneys and neighbouring gables of Dutch terraced housing with less fighting than most cloud tools, and its component database is deep on the European hardware Dutch wholesalers actually stock. Polysun matters for a different reason: with warmtepompen now in the same conversation as the rooftop array on almost every renovation, a coupled model of PV, heat pump, storage and hot water is something the pure PV tools do not offer.
Licence economics suit small firms. PV*SOL premium is now EUR 845 per named user per year plus VAT, so a three-person adviesbureau pays EUR 2,535 a year, and PVsyst Professional is CHF 700 per user per year. Both undercut a five-seat cloud subscription outright, and perpetual licences bought before 19 November 2024 remain usable indefinitely even though maintenance renewals ended on 1 October 2024. Be honest about this when you compare.
Where they genuinely lose. All three are Windows desktop tools. None gives you a customer-ready white-label offerte a sales team can send without rework. None offers live collaboration between an office designer and someone on a roof in Zwolle. None models the salderingsregeling phase-out, terugleverkosten or the SDE++ correction mechanism as first-class inputs, so the Dutch financial reality gets rebuilt in a spreadsheet next to the simulation. And none ships satellite-derived 3D roof capture, so the first twenty minutes of every job is manual tracing.
The honest conclusion: if your deliverable is a bankable yield report, PVsyst stays in your stack whatever else you buy, and we would say that on a sales call. If your deliverable is a design and a signed offerte at volume, a cloud platform that carries the Dutch tariff logic saves the hours. Plenty of Dutch firms run both, and that is a reasonable answer.
Get your sizing sanity-checked. For a fast independent second opinion on system size and payback before you build the design, run the numbers through our free solar calculator or talk to our engineering team.
The 4-Point Netherlands Bench Test
This is the framework we use internally before deploying any design platform on our own solar EPC work. Each tool scores 1 to 10 on four axes, out of 40. We do not deploy anything below 32.
- Dutch regulatory and tariff depth. NEN 1010 part 712 labelling on the generated SLD, NEN 7250 awareness on the mounting and building physics side, saldering modelled as ending on 1 January 2027 with a separate post-2027 redelivery rate, terugleverkosten as an input, SDE++ and EIA handling, netbeheerder and energieleveren registration data capture.
- Engineering rigour. 8,760-hour module-level simulation, P50 and P90 outputs in the format Dutch lenders typically ask for, east-west flat roof row optimisation with mutual shading, wind uplift and ballast inputs to NEN 7250, and export curtailment or clipping modelling for congested connections.
- Workflow coverage. Address to NEN-labelled SLD to materiaallijst to branded Dutch-language offerte in one licence, with DXF or DWG export for the constructeur.
- Total cost of ownership in euros. Licence plus updates plus add-ons plus onboarding time, per finished project, across a five-person team.
Scores across the ten platforms: SurgePV 37, Solar Monkey 34, PVSOL premium 32, PVsyst 31, OpenSolar 27, HelioScope 28, Polysun 28, Aurora 26, PVcase 25, RatedPower 24. PVsyst, PVSOL and OpenSolar each pick up a point on the cost axis against our earlier scoring, because their verified prices are lower than the figures this page previously carried. The scoring is ours and it is opinionated. A three point gap between SurgePV and Solar Monkey is not a gap that justifies retraining a team who already close deals in Solar Monkey every day.
Top 10 Solar Design Software in the Netherlands Compared
Pricing below is 2026, quoted in each vendor’s own billing currency and verified against the vendor’s live pricing page on 2 August 2026. Where we show a euro equivalent for a dollar-denominated product we convert at approximately €0.91 per US dollar; treat converted figures as indicative and confirm with the vendor.
| # | Platform | Price (EUR, mid plan) | Key capability | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SurgePV | €1,180/user/yr (US$1,299) | All-in-one design, 8,760-hr simulation, NEN-labelled SLD, Dutch proposals | Installateurs and EPCs doing 5+ projects a month |
| 2 | Solar Monkey | €525/month package including 50 projects | Dutch-native residential design, monitoring and yield guarantee | Dutch residential installers at volume |
| 3 | PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr Professional | Reference-grade simulation physics | Lender due diligence and SDE++ backed projects |
| 4 | PV*SOL premium | €845/named user/yr + VAT | Best 3D shading walkthrough, deep EU component data | Adviesbureaus and established installateurs |
| 5 | HelioScope | $159/mo Basic, $259/mo Pro | Bankable C&I yield simulation | Consultancies on flat commercial roofs |
| 6 | Polysun | Not publicly listed | Coupled PV, warmtepomp and thermal simulation | Renovation and sector-coupling work |
| 7 | Aurora Solar | $135/user/mo Basic, $220 Premium, billed annually | Deepest residential design and sales workflow | Multinationals with an existing Aurora process |
| 8 | OpenSolar | Core platform free | Free full platform | Solo installers under 3 designs a month |
| 9 | PVcase | Not publicly listed, quote only | Terrain-aware ground-mount layout in CAD | Zonneweide developers |
| 10 | RatedPower | Enterprise quote | Automated utility-scale plant engineering | 10 MW and above developers |
The honest read: positions 1 through 4 are the tools a Dutch firm actually chooses between. Positions 5 through 10 are specialists or imports. Aurora at number seven is a strong product ranked low for one reason, which is that its Dutch tariff and regulatory layer is close to empty.
1. SurgePV
What it does best. SurgePV runs the whole motion in one licence: satellite address to AI-generated 3D roof, 8,760-hour module-level shading, string sizing, NEN 1010 part 712 labelled single-line diagram, materiaallijst, financial model and white-label Dutch offerte. For the Netherlands the financial engine is the reason to look: saldering is modelled as a rule that ends on 1 January 2027 rather than a permanent setting, the post-2027 redelivery rate is a separate input with the 50 percent floor available as a default, terugleverkosten sit on their own line as a monthly charge tied to export volume, and the energy tax component is split out so the customer can see what actually disappears. Flat roof east-west row layouts with mutual shading and ballast estimation are native rather than a workaround, and export capacity can be capped so a congested connection shows the clipping instead of hiding it. Clara AI takes instructions in Dutch, for example “ontwerp 220 kWp oost-west op een plat dak, teruglevering begrensd op 100 kW”.
Pricing. €1,180 (US$1,299) per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, so €5,900 for five seats. Individual seats run about €1,730 per year. Enterprise is quoted. Free trial, no credit card.
Who it suits. Installateurs and EPCs doing five or more designs a month, teams selling residential alongside flat-roof C&I, and firms whose current stack is a desktop simulator plus a spreadsheet plus a separate offerte tool.
Honest limitations. Four real ones. Brand recognition is the biggest: SurgePV launched in 2025, and a bank or an investor’s technical adviser reviewing a financed Dutch commercial project has never seen its report format, where a PVsyst output needs no introduction. It does not file with the netbeheerder or register on energieleveren.nl for you, it prepares the data and you submit it. It has no SDE++ application workflow, so the subsidy application itself still happens outside the tool. And its mounting database is thinner on the specific Dutch ballast systems from local suppliers than on modules and inverters, so procurement still checks the montagesysteem line by hand.
Book a SurgePV demo and bring a real Dutch project so you can judge the saldering phase-out modelling and the NEN output on your own job rather than a showcase file.
2. Solar Monkey
What it does best. Solar Monkey was built in Delft for Dutch installers, and that shows in every default. It pulls Dutch address and building data, generates a roof layout quickly from aerial imagery, runs shading against surrounding buildings and trees, produces a Dutch-language proposal that customers here recognise, and continues into monitoring after handover with a yield guarantee product attached. For a residential installer doing high volume in the Netherlands, the time from address to sendable quote is shorter than in any imported tool, and the tariff logic speaks Dutch natively.
Pricing. €525 per month as a package that includes 50 projects, not a per-seat licence. API integration adds €95 per month. Paying quarterly adds 5 percent and paying annually adds 10 percent, and there is a 14-day trial. Solar Monkey does not publish the overage rate once you pass 50 projects in a month, so ask for it before you commit.
Who it suits. Dutch residential installers running volume, and firms who want design and post-installation monitoring from one vendor.
Honest limitations. It is residential-first. On a 500 kWp logistics roof with an export cap and a battery, its engineering depth and reporting are thinner than HelioScope or PVsyst, and lenders do not treat its output as a bankable yield report. There is no full electrical design deliverable in the sense a constructeur or an inspector wants, no ground-mount capability, and its market is essentially the Benelux, so a firm expanding into Germany or the UK will need a second tool. On price the comparison is not per seat: €525 a month is €6,300 a year for the whole team, close to SurgePV’s €5,900 for five seats, but it caps at 50 projects a month and the overage rate is not published.
3. PVsyst
What it does best. PVsyst is the reference simulation engine, and in the Netherlands it is what a bank’s technical adviser asks for by name on a financed project. Its near-shading model, horizon handling, documented loss tree and parametric studies remain the benchmark. On bankability specifically it beats SurgePV, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Pricing. CHF 700 per user per year on the Professional annual subscription, so CHF 3,500 for five seats before the 5 to 20 percent group discount. That is well under SurgePV’s €5,900, and worth saying plainly: on licence cost alone PVsyst beats us. Education is CHF 420, Training and Research CHF 560, Student CHF 25 and PVsystCLI CHF 3,000.
Who it suits. Technical due diligence teams, zonneweide developers and anyone whose deliverable is a lender-grade report rather than a customer-facing offerte.
Honest limitations. Windows desktop, steep learning curve, no design workflow in the installateur sense, no proposals, no CRM, and no Dutch tariff modelling at all. Saldering, terugleverkosten and the SDE++ correction all live in someone’s spreadsheet. It is a physics tool, not a business tool. Our PVsyst alternative guide covers where the tradeoff sits.
4. PV*SOL premium
What it does best. Valentin Software built PV*SOL for the German market and Dutch adviesbureaus adopted it. The 3D shading walkthrough is the best customer-facing shading explanation in any tool on this list, the European component database is deep, and inverter matching is careful. On the complicated roof geometry of Dutch terraced housing, with dormers, hips and close neighbours, it fights you less than most cloud tools.
Pricing. €845 per named user per year plus VAT for PVSOL premium; standard PVSOL is €585. Five premium seats is €4,225, which again sits below SurgePV’s €5,900. Perpetual licences bought before 19 November 2024 stay usable indefinitely, though maintenance renewals ended on 1 October 2024.
Who it suits. Adviesbureaus and established installateurs with experienced designers, especially where the deliverable is a technical opbrengstprognose.
Honest limitations. Windows desktop install, so no live collaboration and no working from a phone on a roof. Proposal output is not a sales document and most firms rework it elsewhere. Its financial module is built around German feed-in logic, so Dutch saldering and terugleverkosten need manual construction. No AI assistant, no satellite roof capture.
5. HelioScope
What it does best. Module-level 8,760-hour simulation for commercial and industrial roofs with a clean loss tree and export that Dutch lenders and independent engineers accept without argument. On a 600 kWp distributiecentrum roof with east-west rows it is defensible, and its row-level mutual shading handling is good.
Pricing. $159 per month on Basic ($1,620 a year) and $259 on Pro ($2,640 a year), each covering 1 user and 10 projects a month, with DC design caps of 1.25 MW on Basic and 5 MW on Pro. Five Basic seats is $8,100, roughly €7,400 at €0.91 per dollar.
Who it suits. Consultancies and C&I-only teams whose deliverable is a yield report.
Honest limitations. No Dutch regulatory or tariff layer at all, no NEN labelling, no saldering logic, no AI 3D roof, and weak proposal tooling that forces a second licence. Read our HelioScope alternative guide before committing five seats.
6. Polysun
What it does best. Vela Solaris built Polysun around coupled energy systems, so it simulates PV together with warmtepompen, thermal solar, storage and hot water in one model. In a Dutch market where the gas phase-out puts a heat pump into most renovation conversations, that is a genuinely differentiated capability the pure PV tools do not match.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. Vela Solaris sells either a one-off purchase plus an annual service subscription, or a lease with a 12-month minimum, and quotes on request. Directory listings citing a €699 figure trace back to a 2013 price list, so ignore them.
Who it suits. Adviesbureaus doing renovation and sector-coupling work, and energy consultants producing whole-building advice.
Honest limitations. It is a simulation environment, not a sales platform. No white-label offerte, no AI, no satellite roof capture, and the PV-only workflow is slower than a dedicated PV tool. If you never touch heat, it is the wrong purchase.
7. Aurora Solar
What it does best. The deepest residential design and sales workflow in the English-speaking market, with mature roof plane detection and strong customer-facing presentation. If your group already runs Aurora in another country, standardising has real value.
Pricing. $135 per user per month on Basic billed annually ($159 monthly) and $220 on Premium ($259 monthly), with Enterprise on custom pricing. Five Premium seats is $13,200 a year, roughly €12,000 at €0.91 per dollar; five Basic seats is $8,100. Basic and Premium each cover 1 user and 50 projects a month, LIDAR modelling and bankable shade reports and battery modelling are Premium-only, and plan sets are a separately priced service rather than a plan inclusion, with site models from $9.99.
Who it suits. Multinational installers extending an existing Aurora process into the Netherlands.
Honest limitations. The Dutch layer is close to empty: no saldering phase-out logic, no terugleverkosten field, no NEN 1010 or NEN 7250 awareness, no SDE++ handling. Per-seat monthly pricing also scales painfully. See our Aurora Solar alternative comparison.
8. OpenSolar
What it does best. A free core platform with polished residential templates and a short learning curve. For a one-person installer doing two or three jobs a month it is hard to argue with on price.
Pricing. The core platform is free. From 16 April 2026 OpenSolar charges for API Access, billed per project on creation, and for Connectors as a flat monthly fee, but it has not published those rates and they vary by geography.
Who it suits. Solo installers and new entrants who need working proposals without a licence commitment.
Honest limitations. Dutch regulatory and tariff support is shallow and there is no bankable output for financed commercial work. On cost it beats everything on this list, including us, because the platform itself is free; the open question is what the unpublished API and Connector rates do to that from April 2026 if you need those integrations. See our OpenSolar alternative analysis.
9. PVcase
What it does best. Terrain-aware ground-mount layout inside AutoCAD. On Dutch zonneweides the constraints are less about slope than about parcel geometry, water, cable routes and the ecological setbacks a provincie imposes, and CAD-native layout handles those better than a browser tool.
Pricing. Not publicly listed. PVcase is quote only, and any per-seat figure circulating in directories is an unverified third-party estimate. You also need your own AutoCAD licence on top.
Who it suits. Zonneweide developers and ground-mount EPCs.
Honest limitations. No rooftop or residential relevance, no proposal workflow, and it assumes an AutoCAD-competent operator. Most readers of this article are outside its target market.
10. RatedPower
What it does best. Automated utility-scale plant engineering, generating layouts, electrical design and documentation for large ground-mount sites in hours rather than weeks.
Pricing. Enterprise quote only.
Who it suits. Developers at 10 MW and above, which in the Netherlands is a relatively small set of parties, and a set whose current bottleneck is a grid connection rather than a layout.
Honest limitations. No rooftop relevance, enterprise contract terms, and no Dutch code library, so the netbeheerder documentation still gets produced elsewhere.
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Pricing in Euros for a Five-Person Team
| Platform | Entry | Mid | Five seats per year | What is bundled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SurgePV | €1,730/user/yr | €1,180/user/yr (5-User Team) | €5,900 | NEN labelling, saldering phase-out, terugleverkosten, AI 3D, 8,760-hr, SLD, materiaallijst, DXF/DWG, Dutch proposals |
| OpenSolar | Free | Free | €0 core platform | Full platform free; API Access and Connectors chargeable from 16 Apr 2026 at unpublished rates |
| PVsyst | CHF 700/user/yr | n/a | CHF 3,500 before group discount | Simulation only |
| PV*SOL premium | €585 standard | €845/named user/yr + VAT | €4,225 + VAT | Desktop simulation, 3D shading, weak proposals |
| Polysun | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Not publicly listed | Coupled PV, heat pump, thermal simulation |
| Solar Monkey | €525/mo package | €525/mo package | €6,300 for the team, not per seat | Dutch design, proposal and monitoring, 50 projects/mo included |
| HelioScope | $159/mo Basic | $259/mo Pro | $8,100 on Basic (~€7,400) | Engineering depth, weak proposals, 10 projects/mo per seat |
| Aurora Solar | $135/user/mo Basic | $220/user/mo Premium | $8,100 Basic, $13,200 Premium (~€12,000) | Residential workflow, near-empty Dutch layer, plan sets priced separately |
| PVcase | Quote | Quote | Not publicly listed | Ground mount CAD only, AutoCAD required |
| RatedPower | Quote | Quote | Enterprise | Utility-scale automation only |
The comparison a Dutch firm should actually run is SurgePV at €5,900 against the working stack most installers have now, which is Solar Monkey or PVSOL for design plus PVsyst for anything financed plus a spreadsheet holding the tariff logic plus a separate quoting tool. Do that arithmetic honestly and the legacy stack is not obviously more expensive: Solar Monkey is €6,300 a year for the whole team, PVSOL premium is €4,225 for five named users and PVsyst is CHF 3,500 for five. Any one of those on its own undercuts SurgePV’s €5,900. The case for consolidating is that you stop paying for two or three of them at once and stop maintaining the Dutch financial model in a spreadsheet nobody owns, not that the individual line items are cheaper. A stable two-person adviesbureau running PV*SOL alone will pay less by staying put, and should.
The Salderingsklif Test: Five Checks Your Financial Model Must Pass
We call this the Salderingsklif Test, after the cliff edge on 1 January 2027. Run any tool you are evaluating through all five with a real project. A tool that fails more than one of these is not a Dutch tool, whatever the sales page says.
- Does saldering end on a date, or is it a checkbox? The model must apply full netting up to 31 December 2026 and a different, lower export value from 1 January 2027 onward within the same cash flow. A single toggle that applies one regime for 25 years fails.
- Is the energy tax component separated? Under saldering the refunded energy tax and VAT are a large part of the benefit, and that component disappears entirely after 2027. If the tool nets at a single blended tariff, the drop in 2027 will be understated.
- Are terugleverkosten an input? They should be a monthly charge that scales with export volume, not a fudge inside operations and maintenance. If there is no field, ask the vendor when there will be.
- Does self-consumption drive the recommendation? After 2027 a self-consumed kWh is worth roughly twice an exported one. The tool should show how battery storage, a heat pump, an EV charger or an east-west layout moves the self-consumption fraction, and should size the array against consumption rather than against roof area.
- Can export be capped? On a congested connection the netbeheerder may only offer limited feed-in capacity, or a non-firm contract. The simulation has to clip against that cap and show the lost kWh, because that loss is the argument for a battery.
⚠️ Watch out
Check every subsidy line in an inherited offerte template. ISDE covers heat pumps, solar water heating and insulation, not PV modules, so a residential quote that promises an ISDE grant for the panels is wrong. Business systems use EIA, which gives an extra deduction on the investment for assets on the Energielijst, and larger systems use SDE++. You cannot claim SDE++ and EIA or ISDE for the same installation.
SDE++, EIA and What Actually Funds a Dutch Project
Subsidy in the Netherlands splits cleanly by system size, and getting the split wrong in a proposal is a fast way to lose a customer’s trust.
SDE++ is a production subsidy paid per kWh over fifteen years, closing the gap between a technology’s cost price and the market price of electricity. It applies to Zon-PV from 15 kWp upward, and only where the system sits behind a large consumer connection above 3x80A. The 2026 round runs from 22 September to 22 October with a budget of €8 billion across all technologies, which means solar competes with heat, hydrogen and carbon capture in the same ranked queue. Because the payment falls when market prices are high, the subsidy income line in a proposal is a forecast rather than a fixed figure, and your tool should present it as a range.
EIA, the energie-investeringsaftrek, is the route for business systems that are too small or too late for SDE++. It gives an additional deduction against taxable profit on qualifying investments listed on the Energielijst, running at 40 percent of the investment for 2026. It cannot be combined with SDE++ on the same installation. For residential systems there is no purchase grant for the panels themselves in most cases, and the value sits in the VAT treatment and in avoided consumption. The International Energy Agency country data is a useful sanity check on the wider Dutch deployment numbers when you are writing a market section into a tender.
Mistakes Dutch Installateurs Make Choosing Design Software
-
1
Quoting 25 years of saldering. The rule ends on 1 January 2027. A payback figure built on lifetime netting is not conservative, it is wrong, and the customer will find that out from a newspaper before they find out from you.
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2
Leaving terugleverkosten out of the bill comparison. A supplier charge tied to export volume changes the ranking between a 4 kWp and an 8 kWp system for the same household. Model it or you will oversize.
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3
Designing a C&I roof before checking the connection. With roughly 15,000 large consumers already queued, capacity is the first question and the layout is the second. Ask the netbeheerder before you draw.
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4
Treating ballast as a spreadsheet job. NEN 7250 covers wind loading and building physics on flat roofs. Dutch wind zones and roof heights matter, and a generic ballast table will fail a constructeur's review on an exposed coastal site.
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5
Buying a cloud platform and keeping the old one anyway. If your designers will not give up Solar Monkey or PV*SOL, you have doubled the cost and saved nothing. Decide the migration properly, or buy the cloud tool for the sales side only.
These patterns are not Dutch-specific in kind, only in detail. Our writeup on common mistakes EPC companies make in rooftop solar covers the wider set, and the global solar design software ranking puts these ten platforms in international context.
Should a Dutch Installer Standardise on SurgePV?
- ✓ You design 5+ Dutch projects a month
- ✓ You sell flat-roof C&I alongside residential
- ✓ Your saldering and terugleverkosten logic lives in a spreadsheet today
- ✓ You also design outside the Benelux
- ✗ You are residential-only and want monitoring in the same vendor (Solar Monkey)
- ✗ Your deliverable is a bankable yield report (PVsyst)
- ✗ You quote PV together with warmtepompen (Polysun)
- ✗ You develop zonneweides on complex parcels (PVcase)
Verdict. For a five-person Dutch installer covering residential and flat-roof C&I, SurgePV wins on bundled scope and on the saldering phase-out modelling. It does not win on headline licence cost: PVsyst at CHF 3,500 for five seats, PV*SOL premium at €4,225 and a free OpenSolar all come in under €5,900. It wins on total cost only once you count the two or three tools it replaces. For a residential-only firm already closing deals in Solar Monkey with monitoring attached, staying put is the rational choice, and we would say so on a sales call.
How Heaven Green Energy and SurgePV Help Dutch Teams
Heaven Green Energy has delivered more than 10,000 solar installations, and our engineering group builds the software we use ourselves. SurgePV came out of that: a design suite written by people who had to produce inspection-ready drawings on deadline. For Dutch teams the entry points are:
- Shadow analysis for 8,760-hour module-level shading on dense urban roofs.
- Structural and civil engineering for wind uplift and ballast verification on exposed flat roofs.
- Ballasted versus penetrating rooftop mounting when the roof membrane warranty is in play.
- Inverter clipping explained if you are sizing DC generously against a capped export connection.
If you also run projects outside the Netherlands, our commercial solar and industrial solar pages set out how the same design stack carries across markets. Broader market context sits with IRENA country profiles and Solar Magazine for Dutch sector news.
Related Solar Design Software Guides
- Solar Design Software 2026: 7 Tools Compared and Priced
- Solar Design Software Germany: Top 10 Tools Ranked
- Solar Design Software UK: Top 10 Platforms Ranked
- Best Solar Design Software in Spain
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best solar design software for the Netherlands in 2026?
SurgePV ranks first on our 4-Point Netherlands Bench Test with 37 of 40, at about €1,180 per user per year on the 5-User Team plan, because it bundles NEN 1010 part 712 labelled output, saldering phase-out modelling, terugleverkosten as an input, 8,760-hour simulation and a Dutch-language offerte in one cloud licence. Solar Monkey scores 34 and remains the strongest choice for a residential-only Dutch installer who also wants monitoring, and PVsyst stays in the stack of anyone producing bankable yield reports.
When does the salderingsregeling end and what replaces it?
The salderingsregeling stops on 1 January 2027 in one step rather than tapering. Until 31 December 2026 exported kWh are still netted against imported kWh with the energy tax refunded. From 2027 the customer receives a redelivery payment set by their energy supplier, with a legal floor of 50 percent of the net supply rate until 2030, and the energy tax refund disappears. Self-consumption becomes worth roughly twice as much as export, which changes optimal system sizing.
What are terugleverkosten and how should software handle them?
Terugleverkosten are feed-in charges that energy suppliers levy for processing exported electricity, usually as a monthly amount that scales with how much a household exports. Suppliers must be able to substantiate the costs they charge. In a design tool they belong on their own line as a monthly charge driven by export volume, not buried in an operations and maintenance figure, because they change the ranking between two system sizes for the same customer.
How does netcongestie affect a commercial solar design?
Large parts of the Dutch network are full at peak, roughly 15,000 large consumers are queued for a new or heavier connection, and from 1 July 2026 small consumers join the same waiting list under an ACM prioritisation framework. In practice the netbeheerder may only offer limited export capacity or a non-firm transport contract, so export capacity sets the system size rather than roof area. Your simulation has to clip against that cap and show the lost kWh, because that loss is what justifies a battery.
Which standards apply to a Dutch PV installation?
NEN 1010 is the low voltage installation standard, with part 712 carrying the requirements specific to PV and the general rules in parts 3 to 6 also applying. NEN 7250 covers the building integration of solar systems on flat roofs, pitched roofs and facades, including wind loading, internal condensation, temperature effects, fire safety and acoustics. Building-integrated and in-roof systems are common in Dutch new build, which makes NEN 7250 a code question rather than a preference.
Can I get ISDE subsidy for solar panels in the Netherlands?
No, not for the PV modules themselves. ISDE covers heat pumps, solar water heating and insulation measures. Business systems from 15 kWp behind a large consumer connection above 3x80A can apply for SDE++, a production subsidy paid per kWh over fifteen years, with the 2026 round running from 22 September to 22 October on a budget of €8 billion. Smaller business systems use EIA, an extra deduction against taxable profit at 40 percent of the qualifying investment in 2026. SDE++ cannot be combined with EIA or ISDE on the same installation.
Why are east-west flat roof layouts standard in the Netherlands?
Dutch commercial roofs are flat, wind exposed and often weight limited. East-west back-to-back rows at 10 to 15 degrees pack more kWp onto the same area than south-facing rows, flatten the daily generation curve and reduce ballast because the arrays shelter each other aerodynamically. With saldering ending, the flatter curve raises self-consumption, which is now worth about twice what export is worth. Any tool that treats a flat roof as one south-facing plane will produce a yield figure Dutch buyers do not believe.
What is SurgePV’s biggest weakness for Dutch installers?
Brand recognition on financed work. SurgePV launched in 2025, so a bank or an investor’s technical adviser reviewing a Dutch commercial project has never seen its report format, where a PVsyst output needs no introduction. It also prepares netbeheerder and energieleveren.nl data rather than filing on your behalf, has no SDE++ application workflow, and its mounting database is thinner on Dutch ballast systems from local suppliers than on modules and inverters.
Stop paying for four tools. Design it all in one.
SurgePV replaces Aurora + HelioScope + PVsyst + a separate proposal tool in a single license. AI 3D roof in under 60 seconds, bankable 8,760-hour simulation, auto-SLD, BOQ, DXF/DWG export and branded proposals.
Free trial, no credit card · $1,299 per user per year on the 5-User Team planDisclaimer: SurgePV is our own product. It is built by the Heaven Group, the same company as Heaven Green Energy, so treat this as a recommendation from its maker.