Grid congestion

Grid congestion is a traffic jam on the power grid: at certain moments households and businesses want to draw or feed back more power than the cables and stations can handle. The grid is not broken, it is full. Grid operators speak of congestion as soon as the demand for transport exceeds the capacity that is safely available.

Congestion is tied to time and place. One street has solar panels on every roof and three cars charging, while the street behind it carries hardly any load. Netbeheer Nederland explains how local that difference can be. There is no such thing as a nationally 'full' grid: it pinches per area, and within an area per moment.

There are also two sides to it. Demand congestion: too much draw at the same time, mainly in the evening. Feed-in congestion: too much export at the same time, mainly on sunny afternoons when every panel in the neighbourhood is delivering.

The Netherlands is electrifying faster than the grid can grow. Heat pumps replace gas boilers, cars charge at home and more and more roofs carry panels that feed back at the same moments. Every switch is a win for the climate, but it all adds up on the same cables in the ground.

Expansion is in full swing, it just takes long. A new high-voltage station or a heavier neighbourhood cable takes years of permits, space and skilled people. Meanwhile demand keeps growing, and grid congestion arises in that gap.

The toughest moment is the evening peak, roughly between 4 pm and 9 pm: people come home, cook electrically, the heat pump runs and the car goes on the charger. In winter that peak is highest. On the generation side you see the mirror image on sunny afternoons, when panels across the neighbourhood feed back at once.

Where it pinches differs per region and even per neighbourhood. The capacity map by Netbeheer Nederland shows per area whether there is room for demand and feed-in, or whether a queue applies. The grid operators maintain that map themselves; it is the place to check your own region.

For your day-to-day power use, usually nothing: your existing connection keeps working. Grid congestion becomes visible in three other situations, which are often mixed up.

If you apply for a new or heavier connection in a full area, it can end up on a waiting list. Grid operators distribute capacity that frees up according to the prioritisation framework of regulator ACM. Worth knowing: a heat pump or EV charger often fits within your existing connection, so far from every upgrade requires a heavier one.

Panels keep earning their keep, also in a full area. The power you use directly yourself never touches the grid; no congestion stands in the way there. The pinch point is what you feed back.

On sunny afternoons the grid voltage in the neighbourhood can rise so high that your inverter temporarily throttles back, exactly as it should. How that works is explained under inverter. The more of your own generation you use yourself, the less you notice of all this and the lower your feed-in charges.

The structural fix is building more: thicker cables, new stations. Grid operators are working hard on that, but it takes years. Until then the gains come from using what is already there more cleverly, and households play a bigger role in that than you might think.

Shift use to quiet hours: the dishwasher after 9 pm, the car charging overnight. How to do that conveniently and automatically is covered under smart home energy management.

A home battery absorbs your midday surplus and delivers that power to your home in the evening, exactly away from the peak. A smart EV charger spreads charging across the night. And if you want your energy supplier to handle that steering for the grid, that is called grid control.

In areas where the grid is tightest, grid operators buy flexibility from households. That runs through energy suppliers: they steer your home battery, charger or heat pump during peaks and pay you a grid congestion payment for it. Taking part is voluntary and the steering happens automatically in the background.

There is no fixed national rate: how much you receive and how it is paid out differs per supplier and contract. The areas where such an offer applies change too. Which regions take part right now and what the scheme involves there, we track in our blog post on the grid congestion payment.

SolarFast partners with Frank Energie, our official partner for dynamic contracts and smart steering. Frank steers customers' home batteries, chargers and heat pumps and takes part in the grid operators' congestion programmes. On Frank Energie's grid congestion page you can check with your postcode whether your address lies in a designated congestion area.

You are not locked in: you remain free to switch energy suppliers, and the devices we install also work without Frank. The grid congestion payment comes on top of what smart steering for your own bill already earns you.

We pick inverters, batteries and charger brands that can be steered remotely, such as HyxiPower and Kstar batteries and compatible chargers. That way your system can take part in steering and payment schemes, now or later, without replacing anything.

Part of our service area, including Utrecht, De Ronde Venen and Almere, lies in regions where the grid is tight. During the survey we therefore check your fuse box, your connection and what needs to be steerable as standard. Put your situation to us and we will think along about a setup that spares the grid and is ready for a payment scheme.