Grid Operator Cut Power to 18,000 Households Near Tilburg in a Rare Emergency Step
Enexis cut power to around 18,000 households near Tilburg on Sunday to prevent the grid failing. Most homes were reconnected within 15 minutes, but the cause is still unclear.
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A Dutch grid operator took the rare step of cutting off power to around 18,000 households on Sunday to stop the local electricity grid from becoming overloaded. The move, in and around the southern city of Tilburg, has unsettled the sector and drawn fresh attention to the strain on the country’s power network.
What happened
Shortly after 11:30 am, staff in the central control room of grid operator Enexis in Weert saw the situation escalate to what they described as “code red.” To prevent the grid from failing, Enexis switched off a large substation, cutting power in one go to some 18,000 homes and businesses in parts of Tilburg and the nearby towns of Gilze, Goirle, Hilvarenbeek and Biest-Houtakker.
Engineers then went out to switch smaller stations back on by hand, and the outage did not last long. Most of the area had power again within about 15 minutes, and the last affected part was reconnected by around 12:10, roughly 40 minutes after the cut. While it lasted, traffic lights in the region went dark, people were briefly trapped in a lift in Gilze, and the Beekse Bergen safari park lost power.
Why a grid operator would cut the power
Deliberately switching off customers is a drastic measure, but grid operators said it was the right call. Laya Zindel of grid operator Alliander said she understood Enexis acting quickly. “The last thing you want is for the grid to actually break,” she said. “You really have to prevent an overload, because then you end up with a very large outage.”
The reason is that an overloaded grid can cause short circuits and overheating, which in turn can start a fire. Repairing a damaged transformer can then take months. Cutting power to part of the network for a short time is meant to avoid a much bigger and longer failure.
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‘Very unusual’, and the cause is unclear
Even so, the intervention took the sector by surprise. Eefje van Gorp of national grid operator Tennet said she was shocked to hear that Enexis had switched off power for thousands of people. “This is absolutely very unusual. You want to avoid cutting off customers at all costs,” she said, adding that Tennet had a lot of questions about how it could have come to this.
Enexis itself has not yet been able to explain what happened. A spokesperson said there had been no signs of an impending overload, and that the company was surprised by the sudden surge in demand, which it would not normally expect on a quiet Sunday. It was not a particularly hot day either, so a rush of air conditioners was not the obvious cause. The company said it was investigating and expected answers during the week.
A grid under growing strain
Whatever the specific trigger, the incident fits a wider picture. The Netherlands has struggled for years with a shortage of capacity on its electricity network, a problem known as netcongestie, or grid congestion. Businesses in many areas can no longer get heavy connections, construction has stalled in some places for lack of grid space, and since 1 July households wanting a heavier, three-phase connection face stricter conditions.
The pressure is a side effect of the shift away from fossil fuels. More people are driving electric cars and installing charge points, cooking on electric induction hobs, fitting solar panels that feed power back to the grid, and heating their homes with electric heat pumps. “It is good to move away from fossil fuels, but the grid is not yet built for it,” Van Gorp said. Enexis warned as long ago as last October that it could not guarantee always being able to deliver power in winter.
What operators are doing about it
Grid companies are trying several approaches to ease the pressure. Alliander is expanding so-called capacity-limiting contracts, under which large users agree to cut their consumption when an overload threatens. Tennet, meanwhile, announced in May that it would trial an alert in Utrecht, similar to an NL-Alert, to warn households when the grid is at risk of becoming overloaded. For now, though, Sunday’s events in Tilburg are a reminder that the strain on the network is already being felt in people’s homes.