Tens of Thousands of Dutch Households Are Being Asked to Help Ease Strain on the Power Grid
The idea is simple: avoid charging the car and running everything at once during the evening peak, let the supplier manage it for you, and earn money for helping keep the grid stable.
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Tens of thousands of households in the Netherlands are being asked to help relieve the overloaded electricity grid, in a scheme that pays them to let some of their appliances be controlled remotely. Regional grid operators (netbeheerders) Liander, Enexis and Stedin have teamed up with energy suppliers including Eneco, Essent, Vattenfall, Frank Energie and Zonneplan to scale up the approach.
In return for a payment, participating households allow their home batteries, charge points for electric cars and hybrid heat pumps to be steered remotely by their energy supplier. At busy moments the devices use less power, and where possible home batteries feed electricity back to the grid when there is a shortage. Participation is voluntary.
How it would work
For most of the day, the grid has no problems. It becomes very busy only between 4 and 9 pm, especially in winter, when large numbers of people heat their homes, charge their cars and cook with electricity at the same time. In some places, the network can no longer handle that simultaneous peak.
The idea is to flatten that peak. During those hours, participating homes would avoid charging the car or switching on many appliances at once, while around midday, when there is often plenty of solar power, would be a good time to charge the car, run the washing machine and dishwasher, and warm the house with the heat pump. The suppliers say households should not have to do anything themselves and should not lose comfort: the home stays at a pleasant temperature, the car is charged by the next morning, and charging around dinnertime is still possible if needed.
This has been done on a small scale before. A year ago, about 35,000 households in 21 areas could take part, and the companies say those trials showed people are willing to shift their use as long as it is simple and pays. Now they want 50,000 to 70,000 households in Gelderland and Utrecht, and parts of Flevoland and Noord-Brabant, to join, with the aim of reaching around 60,000 participants before winter. From 1 July, any energy supplier that meets the conditions can take part. The eventual goal is to free up 255 megawatt of flexible capacity, comparable to the electricity use of the city of Haarlem, and the companies believe that, in time, hundreds of thousands of households could help.
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Why the grid is under strain
The Netherlands is dealing with what is known as netcongestie, or grid congestion, where the network cannot keep up with demand. The pressure has grown as more people switch to electric cars, heat pumps and other electric appliances. The problem is now serious enough that, in parts of Utrecht and Noord-Brabant, no new connections can be added while the grid is overloaded; in Utrecht, households wanting a new or heavier connection can be placed on a waiting list from 1 July.
What is in it for households
About one million households in the Netherlands already have a dynamic energy contract, where the price changes every hour depending on supply and demand. With plenty of sun and wind, power is cheap; when those fall away and gas plants have to work harder, it becomes expensive. Because of those price swings, many of these households already shift their use and help ease congestion.
The new scheme aims to bring in people on fixed and variable contracts too. They would sign up to an arrangement under which, in principle, they do not charge their car in the late afternoon and early evening, or in which their home battery charges during a surplus and feeds power back during a shortage. Even the heat pump can be turned up or down by the supplier. What this earns depends on circumstances, but large suppliers such as Essent and Vattenfall expect it could be worth several hundred euros a year, with the exact payment differing per supplier.
Smart use is not enough on its own
The grid operators are clear that this scheme is not a substitute for building more network. “The energy transition requires not only expansion of the grid, but also smarter use of it,” said Maarten Otto, chair of the umbrella body Netbeheer Nederland, who called the situation urgent. Whatever the project achieves, the operators say, heavy investment in expanding the grid must continue, and the procedures for strengthening it need to be faster. The government is working on an emergency law to speed up the construction of cables, pylons and transformer stations.