Demand for electricity strains Netherlands' grid

The Netherlands' fast transition from polluting forms of energy such as natural gas to electricity generated from renewables has heaped pressure on its power grid and led to shortages and warnings of looming rationing.

With demand for electricity exceeding supply at times, the government has started an advertising campaign aimed at getting consumers to charge e-bikes and electric cars outside the peaks hours of 4pm to 9pm.

Energy companies have also started offering deals aimed at persuading people to consume electricity during off-peak hours.

And power companies have even told enterprises they may not always have access to electricity during peak hours.

The clamor for electricity has left more than 11,900 businesses waiting for access to the power network, alongside many new public buildings such as fire stations, hospitals, and schools. And developers behind thousands of new homes have been told they will have to wait for access to the electricity grid, with some projects unlikely to be connected before 2030.

Zsuzsanna Pato, an energy consultant at the Brussels-based energy think tank RAP, told the Financial Times newspaper nations should see the situation in the Netherlands as "a harbinger of what is likely to occur in other EU countries" and be cautious about shutting down natural gas fields, as the Netherlands did last year, before electricity generated from renewables is able to keep up with demand.

Eefje van Gorp, a spokesman for Tennet, the Netherlands' national grid operator, told the FT Belgium and the United Kingdom could be in similar trouble in future, as could Germany, "because in Germany all the wind is in the north and the demand is in the south", which makes renewable energy generation difficult.

The Daily Mail newspaper quoted officials in the Netherlands as saying it will likely cost 200 billion euros ($234 billion) by 2040 to grow the electricity grid sufficiently to keep up with demand.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, mayor of the high-tech southern region of Brainport, said he has been told there will be no increased electricity capacity in the area until at least 2027.

"Everything is going electric and electricity infrastructure needs to grow massively," Dijsselbloem said. "We need more than 100 medium substations and 4,000 small ones."

In addition to its growing scarcity, electricity is also becoming more expensive in the Netherlands, with customers being told they will have to pay yearly tariff increases of up to 4.7 percent for at least the next decade.

The switch from polluting forms of energy to electricity generated from renewables is part of the Netherlands' ambitious target of cutting CO2 emissions in half by 2030.

The government is encouraging people to take pressure off the electricity grid by installing solar panels in their homes and utilizing battery storage.

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