Companies in North Brabant and Limburg can be reconnected to the power grid from December. Tennet and Enexis, operators of the high-voltage grid and medium and low-voltage grid, have announced this. A spokesperson for Tennet confirms this after reporting by the ANP news agency. A number of wind and solar parks can also be reconnected. Since June, this was temporarily no longer possible because the high-voltage grid was full.
Tennet has found extra space by better distributing the space on the power grid. This was done through ‘congestion management’: the grid operator asked companies with a large connection to use the available space flexibly for a fee. In this way, Tennet has found 1,700 megawatts of extra capacity, which is equivalent to nine times the power consumption of a city like Den Bosch.
Cost item
The companies then receive money for the electricity they consume less than the maximum capacity of their connection. The compensation they receive for this is at market prices. Because these are currently very high, Tennet is expected to lose a lot of money. It is not known what amount it is. Last year, congestion management cost Tennet 300 million euros.
The power cut was announced in June and affected both new large customers and companies that want to feed power from solar panels back to the grid, because that also requires capacity. Tennet said that companies in Limburg and North Brabant had made massive additional requests for heat pumps, charging stations and solar roofs, due to rising energy prices. The existing infrastructure of high-voltage pylons and distribution stations could not meet this demand.
Also read: Temporary power stop for new companies in Brabant and Limburg