How we are working on the changing energy system

2023 really showed how urgent the situation is for the Dutch power grid. The grid is under immense pressure and almost completely full. This situation will persist in many places for at least 10 years. The rate at which Alliander can increase its capacity for the large-scale construction and upgrading of electricity networks is reaching its limits.

Until 2030, the regional network operators are expected to invest a total of about €60 billion to resolve bottlenecks in the power grid and to expand the network. The network management costs for customers will almost double. Creating a future-proof energy system requires full focus on its implementation. We are not creating new goals or ambitions, but rather concrete plans and actions to make sure that we can deliver the energy networks for a sustainable future. This enables us to make clear choices in the field of space, energy and transition timelines for each sector or area and ensure, together with suppliers and contractors, that our implementation capacity grows significantly and maximum use is made of energy infrastructure through flexible energy usage. In this way, we will be able to prevent a lot of investments. 

The changing energy system requires us to become more assertive and proactive. For example, we will no longer wait for customers and public authorities to make their choice, but rather specify the optimum planning for the energy system ourselves down to district or area level. We actively help public authorities to scale up and accelerate the permit process, which will eventually allow us to upgrade districts or areas in a single integrated effort based on a district-by-district approach. In addition, we are working on extensive flexibilisation in order to significantly improve network usage. We also consider it our task to ensure that companies and households recognise the benefits of flexible energy usage and are offered concrete products for this. 

But even then, the work cannot all be performed at once. We are therefore focusing on certain areas in implementation, flexibilisation and communication: we will build what we can, use new products to make the most of the network in the meantime by making optimum use of customer flexibility and take responsibility by proactively telling people what is going on, how we are resolving things and how long this will take. 

Last year, we worked hard to upgrade and expand our electricity network in our service area. We created over 1,000 electricity connections and 56 gas connections for high-volume customers and about 43,500 electricity connections and 2,200 gas connections for low-volume users. We built more than 1,300 new transformer substations and modified around 850 of them. We also constructed around 2,500 kilometres of electricity cables and 300 kilometres of gas pipes. By implementing large-scale expansions to the network now, we help bring about the energy transition and ensure that connections can be made more smoothly in the future. This choice does, however, mean that we are not always able to connect customers on time at present and that connection lead times may increase. Obviously, we are far from happy with this situation.

Investment breakdown

In 2023 Alliander invested the record-breaking amount of more than €1.4 billion in its energy networks. This is a growth of 15% compared to 2022 and 69% compared to when the national Climate Agreement was signed in 2019. The regional breakdown of the investments over our service area is as follows.

From strategy to implementation

Our task is clear and our strategy for it is in place. It is our ambition to help make the Netherlands more sustainable by 2030 by upgrading or expanding our energy networks now and using them smartly, so that we can meet our customers’ demand for capacity without making concessions on affordability, reliability and accessibility. To bring the capacity of the energy networks in line with our customers’ demand, we are working on various ways of making the energy system future-proof: 

• Completing more work

• Making better use of the network

• Developing heat infrastructure

• Sharing data and developing new market services