Flemish construction companies and installers of solar panels and heat pumps are preparing for a tough winter with high energy prices, yet their problems could increase as demand and waiting times have increased tenfold, they say as have, reported Belgian newspaper De Standaard on Wednesday.
To further add fuel to the fire, the materials Belgium has available are getting scarcer by the day. Anyone who decides to invest in solar panels today will not see them on their roof until earliest April or May next year. "We are in a perfect storm," said Kris Van Dingenen, General Manager of Techlink, the sector federation of technology and installation companies.
"The demand for solar panels has increased phenomenally. Installers are recording up to ten times more requests than they did a year ago. Yesterday I had someone on the phone who had received fifteen requests for quotations in one day: numbers that smaller companies in particular would never be able to meet."
Credit: Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
In addition, there are major problems on the supply side, especially with the inverters that are needed to make solar panels work. The supply of these has come to a virtual standstill, due to "the great shortage of chips", said Van Dingenen. "The car industry has taken all the available chips and is buying up the market. It is a painful coincidence."
Insulation is still possible
The shortage of chips also weighs on the supply of heat pumps. "These, too, are not readily available," said Van Dingenen, who mentioned delivery delays of up to 25 weeks. "The aftermath of the corona crisis is also a factor."
The difference with solar panels is that demand for heat pumps has increased somewhat less spectacularly, says Marc Dillen, Director-General of Embuild, the sector federation of Belgian construction companies. "Installing a heat pump quickly now is not the priority. To insulate is."
There is a rush towards "anything that relates to insulation," said Dillen. "Roofs and cavity walls – I hear from our companies that a lot of families want to get started on these quickly. The same goes for better-insulated windows."
The waiting times for those who want to install more insulation are better, as the market is broader and there are more varieties of insulation materials. It varies from company to company, but "installation within six weeks is still possible."
Shortage of wood supply
In the meantime, energy prices are driving people towards a much less environmentally friendly alternative to electricity and gas: the wood-burning stove. Stove suppliers have been reporting a sharp increase in demand for months now and now that winter is just around the corner, this has also reached the wood suppliers.
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"Due to the high demand, we are unfortunately completely sold out at the moment," is the comment at the top of the website of the company Firewood Koen from Evergem. "We have no more wood in stock".
They are not the only ones. "We absolutely cannot keep up with demand," says Agnetha Dekeyser of wood supplier Debruyne from Poperinge. "Last year around this time we were getting 15 orders a day, today there are 60 or even 80. When I finish this call, I will have at least five missed calls. It never stops."
Debruyne has many new customers who, until recently, did not use a stove to heat their homes, "but there are also regular customers who order twice as much wood as usual, often panicking about what might come."
Many companies have doubled the price of wood, and even tripled that of pellets. As with solar panels, this is the result of high demand and problems on the supply side. The supply is small, due to the disappearance of imports from Belarus. That was where we received three-quarters of our wood."
Debruyne only makes an exception to the order embargo they were forced to implement "for regular customers for whom we know that wood is their only or main source of heating." We try to take them on board. But I do not know whether that will continue to work. I fear that some people will be sitting in the cold this winter."
