Dike Count Remco Bosma stands in front of the camera of the video call connection in the meeting room ‘de Zandzak’ with a printout of the map of North Holland. That card tells it all in one go. The red on his map are the tops of the dunes near Schoorl, 47 meters above sea level. Green, that’s everything just below sea level. And that piece of deep dark green there, that is the Wieringermeerpolder, where the hyperscaledata centers from Google and Microsoft. That is the deepest point in North Holland, more than five meters below sea level. That polder, says the dike manager of the Hollands Noorderkwartier Water Board, is the worst possible place for vital infrastructure.
Yet the province of North Holland and most of the municipalities in the region are pre-selecting that location for a new high-voltage station to relieve the overloaded electricity grid in North Holland. “It feels uncomfortable for a water board to take such a position,” says director Marjan Leijen, who is also sitting at the conference table in the water board’s office in Heerhugowaard. “We are very much like: you ask, we run. But now we have to speak out, because this is about safety. We are very concerned. We will see sea level rise, heavier rain showers that the pumping stations cannot cope with. If there is a disruption in that station, 1.2 million people will be without power.
The province of North Holland, 25 municipalities and two water boards will issue their compelling advice on Tuesday about the largest and most expensive adjustment to the Dutch electricity grid at the moment: a new 380,000 volt high-voltage route in North Holland with two new stations. The hot potato: a 24-hectare high-voltage substation that is to be built on the agricultural-industrial business park Agriport in the Wieringermeerpolder, right next to the Google and Microsoft server halls. about the route of the route to outgoing Minister Sophie Hermans (VVD) of Climate and Green Growth.
Location of high voltage station
No one disputes that the North Holland power grid needs to be relieved. The net is chock full. At the end of last year, administrators Tennet and Liander announced that companies and private individuals should not expect to simply be connected over the next ten years. They have to be on a waiting list.
But there is plenty of discussion about where the new high-voltage lines and stations should be built in North Holland, because all options hurt. Will the poles be in a UNESCO area? In bird breeding areas, straight through the Beemster, in protected landscapes with cultural-historical value? In many places, citizens are putting up fierce resistance.
We will have sea level rise, heavier rain showers that the pumping stations cannot cope with. If there is a disruption, 1.2 million people will be without power
The location of the northern high-voltage station is also controversial. The province and municipalities want it to be located at Agriport. There is space there, there is already a high-voltage station to which the new station must be connected, and there it does not stand out between the greenhouses and the mega halls of Google and Microsoft. But the Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier, responsible for soil, water and dikes in North Holland above the North Sea Canal, is firmly against it. The location is too deep for future-proof construction. Leijen: “We really lack a long-term vision here. The risks and consequences of failure have not yet been properly mapped out. There is no time, we keep hearing. Everything has to be done with steam and boiling water.”
And that has everything to do with the speed at which power demand has exploded in North Holland, and with the expansion plans of the largest consumers, the data centers of Google and Microsoft – a theme about which there is hardly any public debate and about which many hard figures are lacking.
Fourteenth and fifteenth hall
Visitors to the Microsoft information meeting in De Meerhoeve on the Cultuurweg in Middenmeer will receive a bag upon arrival Bee Flower Mixturethe ‘insect-friendly’ seed that the American tech company will sow next to the new data center. There are information boards about how to store rainwater. Outside, the brightly lit emergency generators of competitor Google can be seen on the other side of the A7.
This December 3, Microsoft will hold a meeting for local residents about the expansion of the already gigantic . This is necessary to meet the ever-growing demand for cloud services. The Microsoft building at Agriport has just been completed, and this evening the American tech giant is announcing the next six new halls, each about two hundred meters long.
There are petit four-pastries with the Microsoft logo, Minecraft lanyards and a stand with pieces of heavy power cable that the visitor can lift. It is not about energy consumption. And also not about the relationship between the construction boom at Agriport and the new high-voltage substation that is to be built right next to the new data centers.
Two months earlier, tech company Google held a similar session for local residents about a second Google hyperscale at Agriport, in exactly the same party farm. The tech company then showed uplifting slides with strips of “nature-inclusive landscape” around the data halls, pictures of “bird-friendly trees” and “biodiverse forests” and the “community investment programGoogle did not want to say much about future power consumption and the connection with the new high-voltage route to be built.
This is how two realities have arisen in the Kop van Noord-Holland. Those of local companies, swimming pools and construction projects that will have to wait in line for years for a power connection. And that of major consumers Google and Microsoft, whose new hyperscales with the power consumption of a small city each are smoothly connected to the high-voltage grid.
Microsoft’s second data center on the Agriport business park west of the A7.
Photo Olaf Kraak/ANP
Supply and demand closer together
Timing is an explanation. When the tech giants set their sights on Agriport about 15 years ago, power shortages were not an issue and their requests were honored by Tennet without any problems. The Electricity Act states that the grid operator has the obligation to supply the requested power and install the associated infrastructure.
But will the new high-voltage line be built especially for Google and Microsoft? Are the tech companies expanding because a large high-voltage station has been built right next to their data centers? The provincial documents and studies are vague about this. They call the data centers one of the reasons for the filling up of the grid in North Holland, in addition to electrification of homes and factories, charging stations, heat pumps and the planned conversion of the large greenhouses in the area to electricity.
In a pack of documents that the province recently released after an appeal to the Open Government Act (Woo), the need for strengthening the network and a station at Agriport is described more clearly. According to a concept of the regional advice, this should come from Middenmeer, to bring together “supply and demand” of electricity. The “largest electricity demand” simply comes from “data centers / Agriport”. And grid operator Tennet describes how “a major bottleneck has arisen at Middenmeer” due to economic activities around Agriport A7. In ten years’ time, Agriport is expected to capture a third of all electricity in the Kop van Noord-Holland region.
And so Microsoft and Google, who reported to the municipality of Hollands Kroon in 2013 with ambitious plans for the Wieringermeerpolder, have at least accelerated, if not forced, the arrival of the new high-voltage line. Doing nothing about the grid is no longer an option. at Agriport. And it doesn’t stop there. The new high-voltage route will also attract new data centers. In the draft advice:
Save the Wieringermeer
Is that the intention? Even more power for even more data centers? Nobody knows.
Municipal councilors and members of Parliament who met about the regional advice have not mapped out exactly how big the tech giants’ claim on the grid is, nor whether they will build more. Hard figures are not public. There is virtually no public discussion about how Tennet’s billion-dollar investments relate to the benefits for the tech giants. Not in the House of Representatives, nor in the province or the municipalities involved.
Apparently the provincial government considers its own agenda more important. Of course, you don’t take your own citizens seriously like that
Local activists of ‘Save the Wieringermeer’, who are committed to preserving the character of their polder, are longing for such a debate. They have been trying to get a grip on power consumption in the area for years, but are constantly lagging behind.
Again. The province of North Holland, together with Tennet and the Ministry of Climate and Green Growth, is organizing an online information meeting for residents on Tuesday evening about “the planned expansion of the power network to the Kop van Noord-Holland”. But that is a few hours after the provincial government has determined its position on the regional advice. “Apparently the provincial government considers its own agenda more important. Of course, you don’t take your own citizens seriously,” says Jan Meijles of Red de Wieringermeer.
Resilience
At the Hollands Noorderkwartier Water Board they have other objections. Because what if Minister Sophie Hermans soon sets aside the water board’s criticism and designates Agriport as a construction site for the station, 5 meters below NAP? Should the dikes be raised, or should the station be located on a high mound in the flat grassland – plans that have already been suggested in the published documents.
It is being said, but it has not been investigated, says board member Marjan Leijen. Building a mountain on the bottom of a polder is absurd, and also extremely expensive. The same goes for new dikes. “These are huge investments, for which the residents of our region pay through water board levies. And what do insurers think? Do they want to bear these kinds of risks?”
Her appeal to Hermans: do not choose Agriport as a construction location. Consider higher elevation locations. Dijkgraaf Bosma: “It is about the resilience of our vital infrastructure. That is about climate resilience, but also about whether you want to build in such a sensitive place in these times of unwelcome foreign actors.”
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