No new energy grid connections in Utrecht province despite housing shortage
From July 1, there will be no new connections to the power grid in the region around the city of Utrecht, State Secretary Jo-Annes de Bat (CDA) of Climate and Green Growth announced on Tuesday. All new applications will go on the waiting list. Utrecht mayor Sharon Dijksma called the announcement a “bitter pill” to swallow, especially given the housing shortage.
Applications for heavy power connections were already on hold in Utrecht province. From July 1, this will also apply to small consumers, including new housing, or people who want a heavier connection at home, NOS reports. Though the State Secretary promised that there was enough capacity to connect the known housing development projects in the province.
De Bat spoke of “pressing a pause button” on the grid in part of Utrecht province. The connection freeze will affect some 800,000 people living in the area between Breukelen, Vianen, and Driebergen, including the cities of Utrecht and Nieuwegein. De Bat said he hopes to start allowing new connections again as soon as possible, but it is unclear when this will happen. It could take years, according to NOS.
Dijksma is furious. “We’re also not going to let this slide. Also because we warned the national government about this much earlier,” Dijksma wrote on her Instagram channel. The housing shortage “the biggest real crisis of our time,” she said. “Utrecht has the biggest location for housing construction in the Netherlands.” For a Cabinet that wants to build ten new cities, it’s time to turn words into deeds, she said.
The issue is that the power grid in the Netherlands does not have the capacity to cope with the much higher demand brought on by the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Electric cars, electric heaters, and solar panels all put more strain on the grid.
In February, the national grid operator TenneT warned that without “decisive intervention,” it would have to stop allowing new connections to the power grid in Utrecht, Gelderland, and the Flevopolder starting on July 1. According to De Bat, this even bleaker scenario has been averted for the time being, and the connection freeze will now only happen in the Utrecht region.
The State Secretary added that enough capacity has been found to connect all of the currently ongoing housing projects in the Utrecht region. “There are about 35,000 homes that can still be connected.”
As the grid problems have been long in coming, the municipality of Utrecht had already commissioned a study into the consequences of a connection freeze. The results were presented to the city council last week.
The researchers concluded that a complete connection freeze would amount to damage of between €75 million and €225 million per year. It would affect businesses, schools, transport companies, and the municipality itself. For example, Utrecht won’t be able to replace its heavy vehicles, like garbage trucks, with electric variants, and there won’t be enough capacity for charging points.
Utrecht expects that one in five housing constructions will fail due to this measure, especially after 2027.
The problems with the congested power grid will only truly be over once the grid has been significantly expanded and reinforced. The high-voltage substation near Breukelen must be expanded, and a new power station must be built north of Utrecht. According to NOS, that might not happen until 2031. A location hasn’t even been selected yet.
The decision is leading to “a sense of disappointment” and “bitterness” in the Utrecht province, Huib van Essen of the Utrecht Provincial Council told the broadcaster. He hopes the connection freeze will be lifted “as soon as possible.” The government will reassess whether this is possible after six months of the freeze. According to Van Essen, it is “extraordinarily optimistic” to think that the problems would be resolved within six months.
