There is a huge solar boom in the Netherlands. We visited a 290,000-panel power plant and construction site where Wärtsilä makes the largest battery in the country.
NIEUW-BUINEN / LELYSTAD / NIJMEGEN Europe is a country transitioning to renewable energy at the fastest pace in the world.
It is the Netherlands.
In 2019, 14 per cent of the Dutch electricity consumption was generated by solar and wind power, but in 2021 already 25 per cent.
This spring, the Netherlands bounced even number one in Europe in the production of solar electricity per capita, overtaking Germany.
– Last year, 11 percent of the country’s electricity consumption was covered by solar panels. In May-June, the figure was as high as 18 percent, the expert said Wiep Folkerts Says the TNO research institute.
How has the state known for its unstable savings done this, and is everything going like a dance now?
We were looking for answers from three places across the Netherlands – the route starts at the tiny Nieuw-Buinen solar power plant near the German border.
1) Nieuw-Buinen: One power plant produces a quarter of what the whole of Finland does
A year ago in May, the village of Nieuw-Buinen got its starry moment.
Now a year has passed since the festivities, and the panel sea is whirling electricity independently in the middle of the unadorned fields of East Holland.
Power company Solarfields plant manager Joran Kuperus slips a hard-reinforced cap at the end of the panels, which protects the head from bumps into the corners of the panels.
– The first year was in line with expectations. The power plant will meet the annual electricity needs of 35,000 households, Kuperus says.
The surrounding province of Drenthe is not ultra-Dutch, but a loose and agricultural hinterland.
There are 250,000 cattle in the province, 500,000 people and now more than 750,000 solar panels in power plants – and possibly another on the roofs and yards of Mokoma homes.
Why? Because everything has been streamlined.
– Permits come quickly and the state supports production. In the Netherlands, it has been realized that there is a rush to move, Kuperus says.
The panels have deteriorated and their performance has improved even on partly cloudy days. Companies and investors have embarked boldly on big projects.
Nearly a hundred large solar panels with at least ten thousand panels are ready and under construction in the Netherlands. Nieuw-Buinen will lose its title to the largest power plant this year as Solarfields makes an even bigger one closer to Amsterdam.
There are two of them ready in Finland: in Nurmo and Lempäälä.
The peak power of the Nieuw-Buinen is about 120 megawatts. It alone produces a quarter of what Finland as a whole does.
– We expect this field to be in use for 20-30 years, Kuperus says.
But not everything is so easy when it comes to solar power.
The panels are far from getting maximum power if the day is cloudy. On a hot day, the panels produce too much.
In March, Nieuw-Buinen returned as much as 40 percent more than expected. The month was exceptionally cloudless.
But the bottleneck is the electricity grid.
– The nets are crowded in the Netherlands. This is a big problem. Not all production is available, especially on good days, Kuperus says.
2) Lelystad: Wärtsilä builds the largest battery in the Netherlands
The solution is two hundred kilometers away in Lelystad.
The landscape is different than further east. The province of Flevoland is an unheated land that dried up from the sea in the 1940s and 1960s, and construction of the whole city of Lelystad did not begin until 1967.
Windmills can be seen everywhere, and at the foot of one wind farm is the most interesting construction site in the Netherlands in terms of electricity storage. Buffalo Battery, the largest battery in the Netherlands, is being built here – the supplier is Wärtsilä from Finland.
Wärtsilä Business Development Manager Mathias West enters the gate of the construction site with boots on foot. Lashes water.
The plant to be built in Taivasa will be completed towards the end of the year. It can hold 20,000 households for electricity consumption.
– Even a year ago, the scale of this project was really big for us. Now it’s medium. The trend is so wild, West says.
Large batteries are a necessity to offset the instability of solar and wind production.
– Thanks to these batteries, power plants do not have to be disconnected from the mains when it is too windy or shining. On the other hand, we can supply electricity from the battery to the grid when the sun no longer shines in the evening, the chief operating officer of Giga Storage, the company that ordered the battery Maarten Quist says.
– This is a really important project. I believe that such batteries will become more common in the Netherlands in the coming years, he continues.
Wärtsilä is one of the three largest manufacturers in Europe. It has several similar construction sites across Europe. Germany, Spain and Belgium are interested, West says, but the Netherlands is now the lead star.
– The Netherlands is quite far ahead of the others. We’re trying to find opportunities to get projects here, West says.
3) Nijmegen: Panels come everywhere – on the roof tiles and bike paths
Large-scale projects are only a partial solution.
The next upheaval is the introduction of solar panels everywhere into everyday life: facades, windows, the surface of streets, vehicles, and floating ferries to lakes and the sea.
The European Commission issued a proposal in May. It would make the installation of solar panels in new buildings mandatory from 2029, in large public buildings as early as 2025.
– When the panels become cheaper, they no longer need to be installed only in the best places. Panels are needed everywhere to increase production. But it’s important that they blend into their environment, says a professor at Utrecht University Wilfried van Sark.
This is already being tested all over the Netherlands. On the outskirts of Nijmegen, three new residential buildings are being built in the village of Stevensbeek, with roof tiles at the same time.
Demand for such so-called integrated panels is growing strongly, and new products are now constantly entering the market. In Helmond, for example, you will find office building (you move to another service)the outer walls of which are coated with colored solar panel elements.
On the outskirts of Nijmegen, traditional panels can be seen wholesale on the roofs of farms and residential houses. In the Netherlands, one in five households has a panel or more, and here they are found in almost every yard district.
Henk Vreede let go of his garden. There are four panels at the back of the yard and twenty-four more on the roof. Vreede acquired them in 2014, and the purchase has already paid for itself.
– These produce almost everything we need. In the summer, the panels produce more, so then we can sell energy to the grid. On a weaker day, there is less production, and that’s when we need electricity from the grid, Vreede says.
Thus, households also function as one large decentralized battery that balances production spikes.
The sharp rise in energy prices encourages the acquisition of panels.
– I think there will be clearly more panels. Similarly, the popularity of air source heat pumps is growing. People want to be self-sufficient, Vreede says.
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