Enter decentral power production and renewable energy.  Firstly, consider the offshore wind farms.  Today the first 6 wind turbines from C-Power are up and running.  That has a neglible impact on the grid.  Once the first three planned concessions are built, however, more than 800 MW of (variable) capacity will be connected to the grid.  By 2020, the hope is that all seven concessions are complete, translating into more than 2000 MW—that is projected to be about 10% of the country’s total electricity generating capacity.  To cope with that amount of power, the high-voltage grid connection from Zeebrugge to Eeklo will need substantial investment.  Perhaps more importantly, however, the grid will need to cope with the variability of this injected wind power.  Add the projected onshore wind capacity and we could be looking at 20-25% of total electricity capacity varying with the wind conditions in this region.   To cope, we will need a significant amount of gas-fired capacity as back up power, and we will likely be relying on a more integrated European electricity grid.  Fortunately there is much progress in this regard.  Elia, the Belgian transmission network operator, is investing in better interconnections with our neighbours’ grids.  As a result of such investments to date, this country is able to import up to about 40% of our electricity needs from France, the Netherlands and Luxemburg.  This is particularly useful to improve functioning of the market and to secure our supply risks, mainly because the available electricity becomes so much more diverse in source.  Thus, France has plenty of nuclear power, Germany has wind and coal, and the Netherlands has natural gas and a useful connection to the Norwegian hydro installations.  Looking ahead, there also are (political) initiatives to begin studying the North Sea grid concepts promoted by Greenpeace and Dutch Natuur & Milieu.    

 

Now consider the emergence of smaller power generation installations (solar, biomass, cogeneration) at companies, residents and greenhouse agriculture.  These installations inject power in the grid at lower voltages, right down to the level of the distribution networks.   This means that the network at various voltage levels needs far more active management.  The distribution network operators face a double challenge in this regard.  Firstly, they are faced with a technical challenge since to cope with end users who inject electricity in the net, the distribution net needs to change from a uni-directional to a bi-directional and dynamically-managed network, otherwise known as the Smartgrid.  Eandis, for example, expects that about 2600 MW of capacity will need to be integrated in the distribution nets between 2008 and 2020 (2000 MW in midvoltage, and 600 MW in low voltage).  By 2030 they expect growth to 5000 MW. In 2008 there already was 559 MW decentral capacity in service or applied for. This will cost them money.  Eandis expects to invest 240 million euro extra (in addition to the usual investment budget) in the 2008-2015 period, mainly in the midvoltage network (to cope with the larger cogeneration installations).  Most of the investments in the low voltage network (to cope with residential solar installations) will happen in 2016-2020.