A smarter energy grid also requires room to experiment. For example, for an integrated energy system. Director of Energy Transition Mimi Eelman of Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam: “Within such a system, energy exchange between different energy carriers is possible and allowed”.

In the Netherlands, the legal framework for this is not yet ready - but is already in motion. Eelman: “There is a lot of work to be done in this area. A heat trading market in the Netherlands would help. There is one in Sweden, and it works. When it is cold, electricity is converted into heat, and vice versa”.

All the software for that exchange is available. Eelman: “The focus is on standardisation that makes it possible for devices to communicate and exchange data at the European level. That European perspective is important. We do not limit ourselves to Dutch suppliers in Amsterdam. This also has value in light of geopolitical resilience, unwinding dependence on China and Russia”.

Guiding the approach to addressing Amsterdam’s grid congestion are the Amsterdam Electricity Theme Studies. Based on those studies, the municipality is upgrading and expanding the existing electricity grid over the next 10 to 15 years - by 2050, demand for electricity in Amsterdam will be three to four times higher than today.

That means a lot more cables in the ground and more infrastructure for electricity and heat in public spaces - in the form of transformer boxes, electrical substations and heat transfer stations. Amsterdam will add some 2,600 transformer boxes by 2050 - 1,200 in the existing city, 1,400 integrated into new construction projects. On top of that, TenneT and Liander are building 40 new electricity stations in the capital during the same period. A further 13 outdated stations are subject to demolition/new construction.

The space requirements of this energy transition are enormous. And incorporation into the city raises new issues, argues Renée Krugers Dagneaux, head of implementation management of Energie voor de Stad: “There needs to be heat transfer stations the size of a shipping container on the street”.

People are not so aware of that, argues Krugers Dagneaux: “But we have to think ahead, coordinate. How do you provide homes and offices with energy while ensuring good public space? Is there still room for playing facilities there? For greenery that contributes to liveability and climate adaptation? What takes precedence?”.

The Amsterdam Congestion TaskForce sees several opportunities to create a robust network and add additional capacity at an accelerated pace - starting by approaching processes differently. Naut Loots: “We look for strength in collaboration. In tackling the task from the Amsterdam Electricity Theme Studies, we depend on each other within the TaskForce. By overlapping the schedules of all parties, we can work faster. To avoid waiting for each other, we do not implement plans step by step, but pull processes forward - even before they are formally decided. And that is possible, on the basis of trust. That makes the collaboration powerful and unique”.

With the Electricity Amsterdam Theme Studies, the Amsterdam Congestion TaskForce has been mapping where in the city there are bottlenecks in the grid and how congestion issues can be solved – especially spatially – since 2021. Programme manager Electricity Supply Amsterdam Naut Loots and Geert Wijnen, Liander manager for Amsterdam, are members of the TaskForce: “The thematic studies are the cornerstone of our collaboration”.

Four parties are working together in the Amsterdam Congestion TaskForce. Besides the municipality and regional grid operator Liander, there is Tennet (transmission system operator of the high-voltage grid) and the Amsterdam port authority. Scope of the TaskForce: from a directive role, realise and where possible accelerate structural grid expansions.

With pilot project FlexCitizen, Hugo Niesing of the company Resourcefully is making the Amsterdam electricity grid on Sporenburg more sustainable, together with the municipality and others. In the district, households consume their partly self-generated electricity as much as possible outside the daily peaks in the grid.

Additional objective: to store and share self-generated power within the neighbourhood from the solar panels that are widely available on Sporenburg’s rooftops. Niesing is investigating whether the neighbourhood on Sporenburg can make do with a single electricity box - in this case the transformer box of grid operator Liander at Kees Brijdeplantsoen.

In Sporenburg, 130 households are participating in the pilot. Hugo Niesing: “With those numbers, an extrapolation is possible”. Niesing sees opportunities for scaling up the pilot to become more efficient and smarter in terms of grid capacity: “Thanks to projects like FlexCitizen, citizens are gaining more insight and control. This enables energy communities to become more independent from the grid. Good for the energy transition and the road to a carbon-neutral city”.