Completing more work

Demand for transmission and distribution capacity remains as high as ever, despite initiatives to reduce demand and make better use of the grid. In the coming years, Alliander aims to grow in terms of production output (investments in the networks) to over €2 billion per year. As Alliander we need to achieve this task within a context of structural shortages in terms of technicians and materials. The shortage of materials is under control, but continues to require vigilant monitoring. These situations require a chain-wide scale-up in capacity together with the contractors and a production process that focuses on efficiency to work more productively.

Upgrades and expansion 

Last year, we worked hard to upgrade and expand our electricity network in our service area. We laid more than 2,300 kilometres of cable, built nearly 1,100 transformer substations, converted about 950 substations, and replaced and maintained 156 kilometres of gas pipeline. Through better operational management, our colleagues in the gas domain managed to achieve a large increase in production. Although Alliander invested more last year, not all of our customers noticed this first hand. In 2024, we started more projects and more work was done, but we were less successful in bringing projects to full completion on schedule. The causes include material supply problems and rising costs, and the challenge of obtaining the land and permits needed for our work.

Anticipatory and agile sourcing

One way to generate more work is to work on a greater scale and more intelligently with our partners in the contracting industry. In 2024, we worked both at a strategic level and in concrete tenders to strengthen this collaboration.

We further developed our strategic market approach for the contracting industry, with the goal of continuing to build equal and future-proof partnerships with contractors. Based on trust and long-term contracts, we are working together to accelerate the energy transition. One way we do this is by increasingly working with reciprocal multi-year volume guarantees, so that contractors know what kind of work they can expect and can prepare the people and resources for this. We are furthermore putting unrelenting effort into flow in the overall chain and developing tools to make scaling up rewarding. This creates scalability and ensures that we remain an attractive partner for the market.

We also put these principles into practice: in 2024 we again outsourced several large packages of work, for example, in the NuRijnland and NuMeren programmes. Multi-year volume guarantees were part of this tender procedure. This combined tender involves an investment of more than €2 billion. In South Holland, North Holland, Flevoland and Gelderland, contractors operating within these programmes will lay and replace several thousand kilometres of cable and install more than a thousand new transformer substations over the next few years.

District-by-district approach for low-voltage

We have started to apply a neighbourhood-oriented approach: building the low-voltage grid in one intervention based on a district-by-district and area-by-area approach. Working closely with suppliers, contractors, municipalities and provincial authorities, we have tackled the first neighbourhoods and established a standardised mass-production approach that will allow strong scaling-up in the coming years. 

Customers connecting themselves 

We are explicitly committed to outsourcing connection work to make it easier for customers and licensed installers to do this work without the intervention of the network operator. This reduces the in-house implementation capacity needed for this type of work, eliminates some supply-side dependencies and results in shorter completion times for the customer. In 2024, the first connections were completed under this customer self-connection programme. We are now analysing the lessons learned from these first connections together with our partners, so that the concept can be made widely available to business customers with a medium-sized connection (AC4 and AC5).

Integrated management

In view of the tight labour market, an ageing population and the restrictions on labour migration, Alliander's only real option is to use the available capacity as efficiently as possible and increase productivity. Alliander has launched a far-reaching efficiency programme to this end. At the heart of this approach is the use of data-driven algorithms (AI tools) to improve the quality of complex decision-making while increasing productivity, to achieve the highest value for customers and society, and to enhance our technicians’ job satisfaction. In 2024, we achieved the first benefits by optimising deployment scheduling of our (breakdown) technicians. This has made 17% more technical capacity available for expanding and upgrading our underlying networks. In 2025, we will turn our attention to optimising other scarce technical capacity, such as site supervisors, and implement process optimisations. Alliander is convinced that this approach, in combination with upscaling, will significantly boost production in the coming years, resulting in a percentage increase well into double figures.

Using smarter labour-saving systems

Another way we are working to increase our productivity is the use of labour-saving systems, working even more with standards and applying simplified, innovative and robotic construction techniques. Through further development of modular standards for our assets and innovative tooling, we are simplifying and accelerating the process from design to implementation. We seek to set up sector collaborations to this end and develop together with the market. By introducing a plug-in connection for new construction, for example, we can save implementation time when connecting new homes. Because of the immense housing challenge, this could potentially save a great deal of time in the coming years, allowing us to do more work with the same capacity. And by developing a limited number of standard medium-voltage stations, we are reducing complexity and the completion times in our chains.