Everything seemed ready for the renovation of De Havenrakkers, a primary school in Broek in Waterland, Noord-Holland. That would start around the beginning of the school year, says director Peter Bakker. A temporary building was arranged. “We were very happy with that, because we are in dire need of that renovation.”
But the renovation of the forty-year-old building was canceled. “We heard that a delay of four to six years is necessary, because Liander cannot supply the electricity for the temporary housing,” says Bakker. “We were dumbfounded.”
What happened to De Havenrakkers, however, is not unique. More and more institutions, companies and projects that want a new connection to the electricity grid encounter a closed door. The required extra capacity on the network is lacking in more and more places. This is not only due to the growing demand for electricity, partly because houses, business premises and industry have to get rid of gas. The rapid increase in solar panels and wind turbines that supply their power to the grid also means that the maximum capacity is being reached in many regions.
This puts many expansion plans in jeopardy. Sometimes it even concerns new housing estates, like in Leeuwarden. Grid operator Liander says it will not be able to guarantee the power for the planned schools and other facilities there.
Thousands of additional stations needed
The energy transition that the Netherlands is waiting for to realize the government’s climate plans requires a significant expansion of the electricity grids – one and a half to twice more capacity is needed, the administrators estimate. This forces the construction of more than 100 substations and many thousands of transformer houses, and the laying of thousands of kilometers of cable. It is estimated that a third of the Dutch streets will have to be broken up for this. But contractors doubt they can find the manpower needed; certainly technical personnel are scarce. And then grid operators also get stuck in long, bureaucratic procedures at local governments.
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So the ‘scarcity maps’ of network operators turn orange and red almost every month. Each time, areas are added where new large-scale consumers or producers of large-scale sustainable energy are not connected: Friesland, Flevoland, the top of North Holland, Overijssel and Gelderland, North Brabant and Limburg. In orange areas, it is investigated whether congestion management is possible, with the network operator checking whether capacity can be made available. The aim is to spread energy transport better by allowing customers to supply or use less electricity during peak hours. But where it’s red, newcomers to the ‘interest list’ simply have to wait for the net to expand.
Not only regional networks of managers such as Liander, Stedin and Enexis are reaching their limits. Tennet, manager of the national high-voltage grid, also reported this week that it had no room for large, new projects with solar panels or wind farms in Utrecht. This has been the case in Friesland since the summer.
And it will not only be with large consumers or producers, wrote sector organization Netbeheer Nederland in June. It will soon become possible “less self-evident that consumers can always feed back solar energy and it may take longer to upgrade a house connection to make it suitable for a heat pump or electric cooking”.
Arnoud van der Wijk experienced that capacity problems can arise unexpectedly quickly. As a project manager at SADC, developer of business parks around Schiphol and Amsterdam, he was busy building companies at Schiphol Trade Park last year. “Then the distribution station went ‘code red’ there. The companies whose premises were already under construction were told: when you open, there will be no power.” A new distribution station is not expected to be ready until 2025.
Van der Wijk calls the fact that electricity is not readily available “a shock” and “an eye-opener”. Also on another SADC site, near Hoofddorp, new business premises cannot be connected for the time being. The congestion problem affects sixteen companies.
In more and more areas, owners of wind and solar parks and large solar roofs run the risk of losing their power to the grid. Agricultural and horticultural companies, among others, are confronted with this, says Anna Visser, project coordinator at GroenLeven. This company in large-scale solar energy systems applied for a subsidy for around 1,100 projects between 2017 and 2020, she says. “We were unable to realize 260 of these because of the congestion problem.” Before a customer invests in a roof full of solar panels and a subsidy is applied for, GroenLeven therefore always checks the state of the underlying power grid, says Visser.
Dire cases
Yet she sees distressing cases of agricultural or horticultural companies losing money due to the delay. That happens, for example, if bad news comes after such an investment, says Peter van Kampen, bulb grower in Julianadorp. In 2019 he installed solar panels on the roof of one of his sheds with a subsidy, with the intention of sending electricity that he would not use himself into the grid. But due to its limited capacity, it can’t even sell a third of its production. “What I returned would be a bonus. But as it is, hopefully I’m just breaking even.”
The situation can also be disadvantageous for those who have not yet invested and who have been awarded a subsidy. Nico Verduin, director of farmers’ and horticulturists’ organization LTO Noord: “If you do not realize the project within two years due to a lack of network capacity, you will have to wait another two years before you can submit an application again. That is doubly sour.”
Preparing the Dutch electricity infrastructure for the transition to sustainable energy will cost more than 100 billion euros until 2050, accounting firm PwC calculated earlier this year on behalf of network operators. Whether that amount will become available, and whether that operation will succeed, is an open question. Until then, grid operators will try to make better use of the capacity. For example, since last year they have been allowed to use the spare cables of the high-voltage grid (’emergency lanes’) for the transport of sustainably generated power. In addition, it is being examined whether producers of wind and solar energy can use the same infrastructure more often, so that it can be used more efficiently.
Governments also have a role to play here, says Liander. “Do you want a solar park, a data center or an industrial estate to be connected in your municipality? We are not allowed to make that choice, we connect customers in order of application.”
In the meantime, LTO Noord director Verduin sees companies looking for alternatives, such as storing energy in batteries. “Then you also get a bit out of the cramp of delay. Nobody benefits from sitting still.”
Sometimes the solution is close to home. SADC came up with something to supply its new buildings around Schiphol with power. Project manager Van der Wijk approached companies in that field that had completed a grid connection in time. “Such a company buys at a peak that it usually doesn’t reach. Then such a contract offers space that we can share with companies that do not yet have electricity.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad of 23 October 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 23, 2021
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