Grid operator Stedin had a record number of solar panels attached to homes in the provinces of Utrecht, South Holland and Zeeland last year. This includes nearly 1.7 million new solar panels, nearly half a million more than the previous year.
After its conversion, solar panels with a capacity of up to 599 megawatts will be installed in 2023, Steden reports. The network operator is talking about a new annual record.
Steden is responsible for the gas and electricity grid in three counties, where 145,000 residents will be connected to new solar panels in 2023. As a result, nearly 600,000 consumers in the region now have solar panels.
According to the grid operator, this produces enough electricity to power all the homes in South Holland at noon on a sunny day. But then there would have to be enough space on the overcrowded power grid. Due to the growth in the number of solar panels, solar inverters still fail more often.
2:04Why has the electricity grid in the Netherlands become congested?
Tens of thousands of new transformer homes
Steden's advice is to use the generated energy as directly as possible, for example by washing when the sun shines.
Next year, the grid operator will install 700 kilometers of new cables in the streets so that more electricity can flow through them. The counties will also receive nearly four hundred new converted homes in 2024.
In total, the Netherlands needs tens of thousands of new transformer houses with approximately 100,000 kilometers of additional power cables. The EU will also require that all charging stations and heat pumps become smart, so that they consume electricity at appropriate times – not all at the same time.
