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Through a Dutch government TV campaign called "Flip the Switch" a performer alerts viewers about their electricity usage.

"When we all consume electricity at the same time, our electricity network gets overburdened," she states. "This can lead to malfunctions. So, employ as minimal energy as possible between four and nine."

It is a indication that, in one of the highly developed economic systems in the globe, an issue has gone wrong with the country's power supply.

Electric Vehicle Uptake and Renewable Power Expansion

Holland has been an enthusiastic user of electric cars. It boasts the highest quantity of EV stations per capita in Europe.

Regarding power generation, this nation has substituted gas from its substantial North Sea resources with wind and solar.

To such an extent that it leads the way in Europe for the number of solar panels per individual. Actually, more than one 3rd of Dutch households have PV installations fitted.

This nation is also aiming for sea-based wind energy parks to be its largest source of power by 2030.

Network Overload Issues

While this is all positive in ecological terms, it's putting the Dutch national electricity grid under significant stress, and in recent years there have been a series of power cuts.

The problem is "network overload", says Kees-Jan Rameau, CEO of a Netherlands power company and provider.

"Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the electricity network. It's caused by either excessive energy consumption in a particular region, or excessive energy generation fed into the grid, more than what the grid can manage."

The expert clarifies that the problem is that the grid "was created in the days when we had only a handful of very large, mainly gas-powered power plants".

"So we built a network with very big power lines near those power plants, and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households.

"Currently we're transitioning to renewables, and that means there's a lot of energy being injected into the grid in the periphery of the system where there are just comparatively small cables."

Furthermore these small cables are finding it difficult to cope with all the electricity coming in from wind turbines and PV systems distributed around the country.

Expert Analysis and EU-wide Context

Damien Ernst, professor of power systems at a European university, is among Europe's top authorities on electricity grids. He states it is an costly issue for the Netherlands to solve.

"The Netherlands have a network emergency because they didn't put money sufficiently in their local grids, in their transmission networks, so they are experiencing constraints everywhere, and it will take years and billions of euros to address this."

The expert notes that it is a continental issue. "We have an enormous quantity of PV systems being deployed, and they are set up at a pace that is much, much excessive for the grid to be able to accommodate."

Control Approaches and Consumer Impact

Within a major power provider's headquarters in Rotterdam, company leaders highlight a substantial monitoring system that the company refers to as its "digital energy system" and "the control center of our operations". It is used to help stabilize the network, avoiding power failures.

During periods power production is too high throughout the country, it enables operators to rotate wind turbines out of the breeze and turn off solar panels.

As for situations where demand for electricity is too high, it lowers the power to customers who have agreed to allow energy companies to stop or reduce their electricity supply when the network is under pressure in return for lower rates.

But for homes and companies who want to expand their use of energy with a new or larger power link, that, more and more, is simply not possible.

"Often customers desire to set up a heat pump, or power up their EV at home, but that needs a significantly larger electricity link, and progressively they simply cannot get it," says the energy executive.

The official continues that it is worse for businesses. "Typically they want to expand their activities, and they just cannot get additional capacity from the network managers.

And it has reached the point where even new housing construction in the Netherlands is becoming increasingly challenging, because there's just no available power to connect those developments to the grid."

These people, and businesses, end up on queues for a number of years. Simultaneously there are additionally waiting lists for those who wish to supply the network with energy, such as a recently built house fitted with solar panels on its top.

Business Consequences and Long-term Strategies

State-operated agency that runs the Dutch power network reports that eight thousand companies are currently in queue to be able to supply power, while 12,000 additional entities are waiting for permission to consume more energy.

Some sectors of the Dutch economy are warning that it is hindering their expansion. "Network overload is putting the future of the Netherlands chemical sector at risk… while in different nations it will be more straightforward to invest," says the Head of a leading industry association.

So, was all this preventable? "Looking back I think almost every issue is avoidable," says the industry leader.

The official continues that following the 2015 Paris Agreement on trying to address global warming, "we were heavily concentrating on increasing the renewable power generation side. But we somewhat underestimated the effect it would have on the electricity network."

Network managers is currently planning to spend €200bn on reinforcing the grid, including installing approximately 100,000 kilometers of new cables between now and 2050.

This represents a massive amount of money, but there is additionally a substantial economic impact to not spending it. Grid congestion is impacting the Dutch economic system up to 35 billion euros a annually, according to a recent report from a management consultancy group.

A senior representative responsible for grid congestion says that understanding is unfortunately necessary. "To strengthen and upgrade the network, we need increase twofold, threefold, sometimes expand ten times the capacity of the current system.

"And it's taking on average about a decade to