The Netherlands’ Friesland and Gelderland regions reach maximum grid capacity

Dutch power and gas provider Liander – which serves the provinces of Gelderland and Noord-Holland and parts of Flevoland, Friesland and Zuid-Holland – has announced that new grid bottlenecks have arisen in the provinces of Friesland and Gelderland and the maximum network capacity has been reached in both regions.

“Congestion management does not offer a solution here, according to our research,” the company said in a statement.

It also invited the developers of large scale power plants in the area to immediately contact its experts for advice. “Even in areas where there is still capacity, we recommend requesting capacity in due time. Liander cannot guarantee that capacity will remain available for a long time,” it also stated.

In December, Netbeheer Nederland, the Dutch association of national and regional power network operators, updated the congestion map for the high-voltage and medium-voltage grids. Dutch electricity transmission system operator (TSO) Tennet also recently developed an interactive online map showing the locations in the country where the power grid is most congested.

Over the past two years, Liander has implemented several measures to increase grid capacity in several Dutch regions afflicted by grid constraints, which are preventing more renewable energy plants from coming online. These include the deployment of two giant transformers and the application of congestion management to a bottleneck in the grid.