Providing energy to everyone, that is our core task. Unfortunately, access to the grid is no longer a certainty. We are being confronted with an overloaded electricity grid, transmission shortages, and waiting lists.
The demand for electricity has risen exponentially in recent years. Electric vehicles, buses, and trucks are becoming more popular, more and more households are opting for electric cooking and a heat pump and factories are switching to electric production processes. At the same time, the number of solar parks and wind farms are growing rapidly and more and more homeowners and businesses are installing solar panels on their roofs. Ambitious climate plans and rising energy prices are accelerating this process.
We removed 13,579 gas connections in 2023 (40% more than in 2022) and upgraded 42,718 electricity connections at customers; an increase of approximately 5% compared to the previous year.
In addition, more and more businesses and households generated their own energy and fed part of this energy back into the grid. The number of connections that feed solar and wind energy back into the grid rose by over 26% to 1,078,675 connections (nearly equal to the 27% increase in 2022). The installed renewable capacity (the maximum capacity of all renewable energy sources) in our region increased in 2023 by 22%. The share of green gas that customers fed back into the grid increased by 30%. This is how we contribute to a sustainable energy supply.
Waiting lists continue to grow
The growing demand for energy and energy increasingly being fed back into the grid are leading to an overload of the electricity grid. There is too little capacity to transmit electricity in various areas. Access to the electricity grid and the corresponding transmission capacity is therefore no longer a certainty.
Large-volume business customers who want to have a new connection or an upgrade are placed on a waiting list. We think it will take five to ten years before the waiting list is a thing of the past. We realise that this has a huge impact. Businesses are unable to grow or become more sustainable.
Households are also increasingly being confronted with an overloaded grid. Their demand for electricity is rising rapidly, while feeding electricity back into the grid via solar panels is also increasing. As a result, the pressure on the electricity grid in residential districts is increasing. With as a consequence that households are having to deal with outages of transformers.