Dutch solar panels together generated 16.8 terawatt hours of electricity last year, an increase of 46 percent compared to 2021. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported this on Friday. The Netherlands is in fifth place in Europe when it comes to generated solar energy, and has the largest capacity per capita.
“That is really a lot,” says Martien Visser about last year’s growth. Visser is an Energy Transition lecturer at Hanze University of Applied Sciences and developer of Energieopwek.nl. There are now so many solar panels in the Netherlands that they increasingly generate unnecessary power and therefore have to be switched off. “Solar panels remain useful most of the time, but we will have to get used to the fact that they cannot always lose their power.”
Another obstacle is grid congestion, the tightness of the power grid. Visser: “It may happen that someone in Amsterdam needs electricity that is available in Drenthe, but does not fit through the cable.” Despite this, solar was last year according to Fisher accounts for about 16 percent of the total electricity requirement in the Netherlands.
Grants
In the Netherlands, the amount of solar energy is growing faster than in many other European countries, and according to Visser, this is due to two government schemes. One is the SDE scheme, which guarantees a certain yield, and the other is the net metering scheme, which allows owners to offset generated power against consumed power.
The cabinet wants to abolish the net metering scheme, but it is still unclear whether the Senate will also agree to this. Visser expects new solar panels to remain attractive even without the scheme. “With these electricity prices, they continue to save money. People who no longer buy them after the abolition will be an exception.”
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