An important explanation is the energy crisis. Since the sharp rise in gas and electricity prices, there has been a run on solar panels. Last year, so-called installed solar capacity had already increased by about a third, and this year the increase will be even higher, Zonneplan expects. The total energy consumption in the Netherlands is also declining as a result of the crisis, increasing the share of the sun in the total. Moreover, nature provided a hand with abundant sunshine. In August there was an average of 270 hours of sunshine, compared to 165 last year.
Wind production was less successful: due to less wind, wind power production was less than by more than a third. However, the share of sun and wind of the total was 39 percent. A year ago, it was 32 percent.
Solar energy is ahead of the curve in the Netherlands. Thanks to a sharp drop in panel prices, generous subsidies, and a recent rise in energy prices, the Netherlands has evolved from a laggard to a champion in solar energy: since this year, the country has been in the world’s top ten solar energy producers. In recent years, the Netherlands has overtaken France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy and now stands alone with sunny Spain.
The power grid is overloaded
The influx of solar energy also causes problems, especially on the electricity grid, which gets increasingly overburdened on the sunny days of spring and summer. The reason is the large amount of energy from a number of large power plants entering the grid between sunrise and noon.
So network operators have to put in a lot of effort on sunny days to keep the network balanced; Supply and demand for electricity must always be in equilibrium. In order to deal with the problems, it was agreed that the major new suppliers of solar energy might generate a maximum of half of the total capacity of the grid, if they wanted to be able to claim subsidies.
