‘There is only one logical outcome: with wind the Netherlands must continue’

On the yard of technical service provider Equans in Hoboken, a district of Antwerp, there is a ‘socket’ of special format: the device is almost 25 meters high, more than fifty meters long and weighs 3,900 tons. And he costs a few hundred million euros.

This is therefore a so -called ‘transformer platform’ that network manager Tennet has built to bring electricity from wind farms to land. At the bottom of the enormous colossus, which in a few months at about fifty kilometers off the coast of Egmond aan Zee If the cables of dozens of wind turbines are ‘stung’ in it.

Hence the comparison with a socket that often uses the TenneT-Top itself. Although the craftsmen who have built the platform find that in turn formulated somewhat irreverently. “There is a lot of technology in such a thing,” says one of them. On the transformer platform all collected windstream is brought to a higher voltage level, so that it can then be transported quickly and efficiently to the mainland.

The platform looks like a new car on a truck on the way to the dealer. Everything is still in the foil, even the fire extinguishers, and railings are taped everywhere to ensure that no scratches come on the new paint.

“The paintwork alone costs a million euros,” says Annemarie Taris, who is about the connection of wind farms at sea on new transformer platforms. “So you don’t want a lot to be damaged at the last minute. All the painting that you have to update offshore costs three times as much. Because you have to bring everything, the painters and the things, with ships there. “

Taris trains, in yellow overall and with a white safety helmet, enthusiastically around all the special places of the platform. Including the control room, the space from which the power cables again go out of the platform towards the mainland (“the extension cords to the shore”) and the ‘combustion toilet’ – because of nature you are not allowed to discharge stool at sea. She calls the transformer space the ‘heart’ of the platform. “It’s magical what happens here.”

She is proud. This transformer platform is the latter in a series of seven that Tennet had built. The platforms must contribute to a more sustainable energy supply in the Netherlands. For two and a half years she worked on it with 100 to 150 colleagues with soul and bliss. And now it’s almost finished. On time and within budget.

It is also a promise for the future, they say at Tennet. Because if it is up to the network operator, there are many more of this kind of mega stick boxes. In fact, they are already reserved, says a spokesperson. Fourteen in total this time. And also much larger. The following platforms can process 2 gigawatts (2,000 megawatts) in windstream, three times as much as the current one. “They are just as big as a football stadium,” illustrates the spokesperson. It is a project that involves a few dozen billions of euros.

At Tennet they believe that wind energy has the future. It would be the best way to green the power supply, and at the same time to become independent of other countries in the energy area. Thanks to the North Sea, wind energy is exuberantly in stock. And you can also easily ‘harvest’ it there. The North Sea is relatively shallow and quiet, so you can build well. And there is a lot of blowing. At Tennet, they predict that Windstroom will be good for three -quarters of power consumption in five years.

Dark clouds

But now that dark clouds pack together above the wind energy sector. Many builders of wind farms, such as Eneco, Vattenfall, Orsted, Shell and Engie, have become wary in recent months to invest even more money in new projects. An important tender round later this year therefore threatens to fail. In Denmark, the mecca of the wind sector, a tender has recently been canceled due to a lack of enthusiasm.

The windmill builders in turn point to a ‘deteriorated earnings model’. Building wind farms has become much more expensive in a short time, due to scarcity of anything and everything (materials and people) and high interest rates.

At the same time, customers do not want to pay higher prices – if they already want electricity. It is the heavy industry that many of the windmill builders aim, but there is again hesitant with the sustainability of the production processes (electrifying in this case). Partly because this requires billions in investments.

It is a rather dramatic change in relation to how it was only a few years ago. Then Wind was one of the great success stories of the energy transition. It even went so well that at some point no subsidies had to be used.

But now the draft has come in again. You could say that the sector has fallen victim to its own success. Thanks to all those new wind farms at sea, so much windstream is sometimes produced at the same time, that a surplus is created and electricity prices become negative. In that case, producers must pay.

They are clouds that also threaten TenneT’s plans – and ultimately the further sustainability of the Netherlands, if you can believe TenneT.

Without new wind farms, the sockets of TenneT make little sense. The fourteen -reserved copies are now not all ‘covered’ with wind farms, a spokesperson acknowledges. Until the final construction of this has to be decided. To start with those tender rounds.

Painful detail: the reason that Tennet has now reserved fourteen platforms at the same time, and not first a few and later a few, is because it was done ‘in steps’ during the construction of the past series, but the last platforms Then it turned out to be much more expensive than the first. Because prices had risen sharply in the meantime.

Independence

For Tennet, the developments are a reason to sound the alarm. Top woman Manon van Beek, who was also present in Hoboken, warned that the Netherlands “should not lose the momentum” when it comes to the transition to a cleaner energy supply.

According to her, the wind sector is in ‘an impasse’. Not only because the demand from the industry is left behind, but also because the electrification of the transport sector is standing. Everywhere in Europe, subsidies on electric cars are now being withdrawn again. Also in the Netherlands. The transport sector is a large power buyer.

Holding the momentum is, according to her, incredibly important. Van Beek, in the presence of MEPs invited by TenneT, explicitly referred to the geopolitical turbulence of the past weeks, whereby the new US government of President Trump in fact says to Europe: you are looking for it yourself.

The political discussion has therefore been tilted to: is the EU capable of taking care of itself? The TenneT boss believes that securing its own energy supply-with sea wind in this case-is a crucial pillar under independence. “It is now a lot about investing more in its own European defense,” says Van Beek. “But actually transformer platforms are also defense projects.”

Van Beek therefore argues that the government gets everything out of the closet to help the wind sector. Among other things, she asks for more financial support for the wind farm builders, and for the industry that ultimately has to decrease.

In concrete terms, Van Beek wants the government to issue guarantees that if the electricity price comes under a certain, no more profitable level, they ‘match’ the difference. So that operators can still earn enough money. (And if the power price becomes very high, the government must get money back.)

In addition, she wants the government to do everything in its power to achieve more ‘customized agreements’ with large industrial companies. The tailor -made appointment is the policy instrument with which the government wants to encourage those companies to make it more sustainable. The government promises financial support in exchange for extra greening efforts.

But so far those agreements have hardly been gone off the ground. For the time being, only a hard appointment has been made with one company. The industrial companies say that the schemes are not attractive enough.

New subsidies for the seawind sector would be a change. One that also defies economic logic in a sense. The sector once started with subsidies, just like many new, innovative sectors. But after that he soon became so successful that those subsidies were no longer needed. So it ‘hears’. Now, however, according to TenneT, there is again a need for it.

It is also a politically sensitive request. Coalition parties BBB and PVV have great difficulty with windmills. According to the BBB, they are in the way of fishermen and farmers (at mills on land) and the PVV finds climate change nonsense.

The VVD is now the biggest proponent of wind energy. In some groups in society, windmills evoke hate. The Bijpas support for which Van Beek argues can also be very expensive for the government on paper.

Discount on the net rate

They also realize that TenneT itself plays a role in the problem. The investments that the network operator makes in the power grid, including in sockets, must be recovered via the ‘net rates’: the rates that customers pay for the use of the grid. Dozens of billions of euros are involved in these investments.

That means that the net rates will rise considerably in the coming years, says TenneT – up to 5 percent per year. The ‘normal’ current costs are already much higher in the Netherlands than in Belgium, Germany, China and the US, industrial companies complain. Higher net rates do not help with this.

But TenneT says it can’t change anything about that. This is simply the way in which net extensions have been funded for years, and that way works well, says TenneT. Financing by the state, an option about which some politicians talk, TenneT thinks “less predictable,” the spokesperson said. Tennet has recently introduced a new contract form, where customers can get a discount on the net rate in exchange for less security of delivery.

According to TenneT, the best route is to bring the total power costs more ‘in line’ with other countries, for example by compensating large -scale users again and even more for certain ‘indirect’ power costs. Emissions that have to buy and pass on power products to customers, in this case.

This compensation (IKC sets) is controversial because critics one ‘Fossil subsidy’ see. After all, electricity is also produced with gas plants. In 2023 she was temporarily not paid. That happened again last year, but there is no clarity for the near future. Minister Sophie Hermans (climate and green growth, VVD) will make clear what she wants in the spring memorandum. In the sector, this is eagerly looking for at this moment.

The European Commission seems to be open to the ‘Bijpas’ measures that Van Beek wants, although that is in principle a form of state aid. The ‘Independence issue’ is also living strongly in Brussels at the moment. But at the same time there is growing political resistance to extra sustainability inspections, so that it is waiting.

So for the wind sector they are exciting times. ‘Connection manager’ Annemarie Taris remains hopeful in Hoboken. The ‘politics’, the bosses have to decide on that. But looking at the mega tender box that she has been working on in recent years, according to her there is only one logical outcome: the Netherlands has to continue with wind.

“It is clean, infinite and once the infrastructure is built, it costs virtually nothing to generate electricity.” The Netherlands should not ignore this opportunity if she wants to say.

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