Grid congestion debate: Minister Hermans will look at storage target
Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives debated Grid Congestion and Energy Infrastructure. Energy Storage NL in its letter for the debate pointed to the importance of an energy storage target in order to provide more direction for the development of storage in the Netherlands and also provide certainty to market participants, grid operators and governments about the desired direction for the development of storage in the future energy system.
Questions from House of Representatives on Energy Storage Target
Earlier this week, from the Energy Storage Roadmap also already referred to a national flexibility and storage target. Indeed, the Netherlands is required by the European Union (EU) to report on the achievement of a national energy storage target every 3 years starting in 2026. That target, however, is not set in the Energy Storage Roadmap for now.
Hence MP Grinwis (CU) questioned the minister during the debate about the cabinet's position around creating a storage target, also referring to European agreements. The minister indicated that there is indeed currently no target set in the Energy Storage Roadmap. This is because for the government storage is one of the ways to organize flexibility and is therefore not a goal in itself. However, the minister did indicate that flexibility is important in a future energy system and that she sees that energy storage is undergoing rapid developments such as the fall in the battery price and the increase in storage capacity, as a result of which the minister considers it important to monitor this development closely. After insistence by MP Grinwis, the minister finally promised that the minister will list what the European regulation requires of the Netherlands and what the pluses and minuses of a storage target are. And that a decision will be made based on this weighing.
Role of storage in grid congestion
Energy Storage NL, together with Netbeheer Nederland, additionally made it clear that battery storage can also reduce off-take congestion. Member of Parliament Grinwis (CU) therefore asked whether the minister could map out where storage could reduce congestion at various grid levels. The minister said he has already asked the grid operators where storage is needed to reduce congestion. Once a picture of this has been formed, discussions can be held with decentralized authorities on how to organize spatial integration.
MP Kröger (Groenlinks-PvdA) asked the minister how storage in SDE++ can become available for energy communities to invest in neighborhood batteries, for example, the minister will come back to this separately.
