The electricity grid in the province will have considerably more space in the next two years. TenneT, the company that manages the high-voltage grid, is making 805 megawatts of extra power available, enough to supply large parts of the province with electricity. This means that companies can move forward with plans for sustainability, housing construction and growth, after the network has been overloaded for years.
“Because electricity consumption in Brabant is increasing less rapidly than we previously thought, space will become available on the grid that we can now use,” says Robert Kuik, Director of Network Planning at TenneT.
“In addition, planned expansions of the high-voltage grid will generate hundreds of megawatts. For a province where the grid was full in 2022, this is a huge boost. In this way we can help companies become more sustainable, build homes and enable economic growth.”
TenneT is now working on it more than fifty places in Brabant to strengthening the network. “In 2026, we will put an additional transformer into use in Geertruidenberg, good for an additional two hundred megawatts in West Brabant. A year later, we will install another transformer and open a new high-voltage station in Tilburg. This will create another 405 megawatts of additional space on the grid in East, South and Southwest Brabant,” says Kuik.
Bas Maes, Deputy of the province of North Brabant, calls it an important step. “It doesn’t help everyone yet, but energy is a basic need for housing and economic growth. We must continue to expand so that more and more companies and households can be connected.”
Still work to be done
So there still remains work to be done. In some parts of Northeast Brabant, the waiting list is larger than the capacity that will become available in the coming years. Some companies may have to wait until the period between 2033 and 2036, because a new high-voltage station must first be built in Wijchen.
TenneT can immediately make extra power available for part of West Brabant. Part of this goes to Enexis, the regional grid operator, which is now calculating which companies can be helped by this. Entrepreneurs on the waiting list will be notified in February.
Kuik emphasizes that companies and households can also help to prevent overload. “Avoiding rush hour remains necessary. Those who use electricity mainly outside peak hours create space on the grid. Energy savings also help to reduce the pressure.”