‘ WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO MAKE THE
ENERGY TRANSITION A SUCCESS’ TENNET IS WORKING WITH TU DELFT ON A SUSTAINABLE ELECTRICITY GRID
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Tennet has an important role to play in the energy transition. The company faces some major challenges. To develop new innovations, the European grid operator is working with TU Delft in the recently opened Electrical Sustainable Power (ESP) Lab, where the electricity grid is being readied for the future. Maarten Abbenhuis, chief operating officer (COO) at Tennet, was closely involved in the development of this unique research and testing facility.
Text: Jurjen Slump
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evolutionary. This is how Abbenhuis (himself an alumnus, who studied systems engineering, policy analysis and management in the 1990s) describes what has happened in the last decade. The existing high-voltage network dates from the 1960s and had considerable overcapacity until recently. However, the last decade has seen a ‘huge shift’ take place from the generation of energy using coal and gas towards solar and wind power. “All of these renewable energy sources have to be connected to our network.” Things are getting tight. There have been several recent reports in the newspapers that new wind turbines, solar fields and other renewable projects cannot be connected to the network because of a lack of capacity. “In Drenthe, there is a lot of low-cost land available for new solar farms and wind turbines, but our highvoltage network has only limited capacity there”, says Abbenhuis, highlighting one of the many challenges.
INVESTMENT PROGRAMME Not only is supply increasing, demand is also set to rise. “That means that we have to improve the capacity of our network in order to be able to match demand and supply at any time of day.” That calls for a ‘dynamic’ network, because the amount of energy generated by wind and the sun varies significantly compared to coalfired and gas-fired power plants, for example. All kinds of different technological issues are involved in this.
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