Tennet manages the high-voltage grid in the Netherlands. This means that it is responsible for transporting energy from power stations to the regional power grids, which in turn are managed by companies such as Stedin and Liander.
Green energy causes problems
That energy supply must constantly be kept in almost perfect balance, which means that the same amount of current must be flowing in as it is going out. If this does not happen, a net can eventually go flat.
But due to the greatly increased amount of green energy, especially from wind, there is more and more simply too much electricity entering the grid. Or, at least as problematic, it comes up in the wrong place on the net.
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When there is a lot of wind, a lot of cheap electricity is produced in the north of the country, gives Jan Vorrink, manager of Tennet’s control center, as an example. But that is usually not the place where all that energy is consumed. If all this has to be transported to end users in the south or west of the country, the high-voltage cables sometimes cannot handle it.
And then Tennet is stuck with the fried pears, because ultimately the electricity has to reach those households and factories.
Switch off and on
In that case, Tennet must do two things: in the north of the country, a power station, or possibly wind farm, must be found willing to stop or reduce production for a fee. “And the energy was bought by someone further south in the Netherlands. So we have to find a power station there that will run. They are all more expensive,” says Vorrink.
Tennet then uses a bidding system to ask which power station at which price it can produce the extra power in the very short term in the vicinity of where the power is needed. And Tennet has to pay for that. The more often this happens, the more money the state-owned company has to spend on it.
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340 million euros
Unfortunately, this problem is becoming more and more common. In the past, such a period sometimes lasted a few hours, now it is regularly fourteen hours a day, says Vorrink. The extra costs incurred by Tennet to switch off one power station and restart another, more expensive power station, amounted to almost 340 million euros last year.
Those costs are ‘socialized’ as it is called in jargon. So everyone pays for it. You will see this reflected in the network costs on your electricity bill. A year earlier that was only 78 million euros, the years before that even less.
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Work causes even more problems
To ensure that far fewer of these expensive operations are needed in the future, Tennet is investing billions to double the grids throughout the country, so that more power can be transported. Good for the future, but in the short term that will cause even more problems.
The work has to take place during the day, when the energy demand is high, because it is too dangerous in the dark. And while working, no current can be forced through the cables.
For these planned activities, the grid operator can agree in advance with power plants not to supply electricity, but the disadvantage they experience as a result must also be compensated for.
At least another ten years
Vorrink expects that it will take at least another ten years before all plans to increase the capacity of the high-voltage grid are realized, and it could just take longer. As long as the grid is not in order, Tennet will have to deal with high congestion costs, which will ultimately have to be borne by all Dutch people.
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