About Laurens Arends
Founder and reviewer at EnergieAanbieding.nl
I am Laurens Arends, founder of EnergieAanbieding.nl. For more than six years I have followed the Dutch energy market and studied energy rates, energy contracts, switching offers and the terms that come with them. In those years the market has changed considerably. New rules were introduced and there were major price shocks. Alongside fixed and variable contracts, dynamic contracts have become more important, while solar panels, feed-in charges and changing energy prices have made comparing more complicated.
With EnergieAanbieding.nl I want to make that market easier to understand. An energy contract is more than a price per kilowatt hour or an attractive welcome bonus. You also have to deal with fixed charges, terms, welcome discounts, feed-in compensation and sometimes feed-in charges. In the end, what matters is what a contract means for you in your situation once everything is added up.
That is what I work on every day at EnergieAanbieding.nl. I follow developments at energy suppliers, check information about contracts and offers, and assess how attractive a supplier or offer is compared with the rest of the market. I also write and check explanations of topics that affect the choice of an energy contract.
How I assess energy suppliers
With an energy supplier, I never look at just one figure or one offer. A high discount can seem interesting at first glance, but it does not automatically make a contract good value if the other rates are higher than at a competitor. That is why I look at the full picture: the rates and total costs, the contract terms and options, and how customers rate a supplier.
Transparency is also very important to me. Can you easily find out what you are paying? Is it clear when a bonus will be paid out? What happens if you have solar panels? And are important costs and terms easy to find? With energy in particular, small differences in the small print can end up making a big difference on your annual statement.
For that assessment I use as much up-to-date data as possible. The rates and offers of energy suppliers are checked automatically every day by a system I designed myself. However, a change does not simply appear on the website: I check all the data first. Customer reviews are updated weekly with data from independent sources, such as Trustpilot and Kiyoh.
On the brand pages, each supplier also gets a score based on eight factors. That score is always set against the scores of the other suppliers in the comparison. Those figures form a good basis for assessing an energy supplier. In my expert opinion I then look at how it all fits together: what do you get for the price, for which type of consumer is a contract interesting, and which points should you be aware of before you switch?
Looking beyond the biggest discount
The mistake I see consumers make most often is focusing too much on one eye-catching benefit. A cashback of hundreds of euros simply stands out more than a slightly higher supply rate or unfavourable terms. In their offers, energy suppliers deliberately play on benefits that grab your attention straight away.
That is why I try to show the full picture. I would rather compare the full annual price and the terms that come with it. The type of contract also has to suit your situation. Someone looking for certainty may make a different choice than someone who can easily shift their energy use to cheap hours. And for a household with solar panels, feed-in charges and feed-in compensation can play a much bigger role than for someone without solar panels.
As a result, there is no single supplier that is automatically the best choice for everyone. It really depends on your personal situation. My main goal is to make clear how suppliers and contracts differ from each other, so you can decide for yourself what matters to you and which energy supplier best suits your situation.
Independent assessment
For some offers, EnergieAanbieding.nl receives a fee when someone switches via our website. This allows me to keep the website free to use. This fee has no influence whatsoever on my assessment of a supplier or contract. Offers for which we receive no fee are included in our comparisons just the same and are assessed in the same way.
How that works exactly and how EnergieAanbieding.nl makes money is something I am happy to explain separately on the page about how we make money. That way you can see for yourself how our income comes about and which agreements we follow to keep commercial partnerships and editorial assessments separate.
Question or found a mistake?
The energy market changes quickly. Because of this, information can become outdated or incorrect despite our daily checks. Have you spotted a mistake, do you think information is missing, or do you have a question about how we work? Then let me know via the contact page of EnergieAanbieding.nl.
I am happy to look at reports like these. After all, up-to-date and verifiable information is the basis of a good comparison.