TenneT spent €49 million on congestion management; regional operators spent €1.6 million combined

What happened

The Dutch regulator ACM published the first update of its public dashboard on grid congestion measures. Grid operators report they are on track preparing better grid insight and congestion measures, but large-scale deployment is still limited. The spending gap is striking: TenneT spent €49 million on congestion management in 2025, while all regional operators combined spent just €1.6 million — far less than expected. ACM will verify the reports on location in 2027. Sources: ACM, 21 October 2026 (acm.nl); Solar & Storage Magazine, 22 October 2026 (solarmagazine.nl).

Our take

The €1.6 million figure tells you congestion management at distribution level is still mostly theoretical. For developers, that means two things. First, do not count on congestion products (like time-limited contracts) being available at your substation soon — check per region. Second, where these products do arrive, they will favour flexible assets like batteries, so early movers at the right substations get the first contracts.

Meanwhile, the map keeps changing

The same month, Enexis reported 13 new congestion hotspots in Drenthe, Overijssel, Noord-Brabant and Limburg, while TenneT lifted the congestion status for parts of Groningen and Drenthe. Capacity is a moving target, region by region and even substation by substation.

What to do with this

Track congestion per province and per substation, not per country. Our /netcongestie pages summarise the Dutch situation per province, and the Netherlands map ranks substations with planned projects included. Every Gridscouter plan starts with 14 days of full access for €0 today. Cancel any time before the trial ends and you pay nothing.

Gridscouter scores are estimates from open map data, not grid operator capacity figures. Always confirm connection capacity with the grid operator.