Dutch grid maps are almost entirely red these days, giving the impression that the system is ‘full. The Dutch electricity grid maps turns is almost completely red, the takeaway seemed obvious: our electricity system is “full.”
But look beyond the headlines and a different picture emerges. A 2022 study for the municipality of Haarlemmermeer shows that large datacenters—among the heaviest industrial users—draw on average just 35 % of the power they have contracted[1]. A few years later, in 2024 Boston Consulting Group’s national analysis finds that even during their monthly peak hour, firms tap only ≈ 67 % of their reserved transport capacity, leaving one third idle[2].
Taken together, the studies show that much of the Dutch grid challenge might be administrative rather than physical: kilowatts booked “just in case” stay dark for most of the day. That unused headroom is largely administrative:
- Reserved but idle transport rights freeze bandwidth for future expansions that may never arrive.
- Peak only tariffs price everyone for the worst five minutes of the year, discouraging dynamic operation.
- Lengthy permitting cycles—often seven plus years—push planners to lock in spare margin.
How much “slack” is really available became crystal clear in April 2025, when TenneT offered time bound “off peak” contracts and instantly unlocked 9 GW of latent capacity—roughly 40 % of Dutch peak load—without laying a single new cable[3].
Netbeheer Nederland now frames this approach as “spitsmijden” (rush hour avoidance): an essential complement to new lines, codified in its guidance on flexible use of the electricity grid[4].
Making Grid Flexibility Operational with HEDGE-IoT
How do we put “rush-hour avoidance” into daily practice? Netbeheer Nederland can only turn red zones green if companies make their flexibility both measurable and controllable—exactly what the HEDGE-IoT solution at Electricity Campus Arnhems Buiten (hereafter: Electricity Campus) enables. Devices are first “SAREF-ised,” giving them a shared semantic interface, and then linked to campus-level markets that respond to time- and congestion-priced signals. Capacity that was once administratively reserved becomes programmable and deployable. In short: Netbeheer Nederland sets the rules, while HEDGE-IoT provides the technical tools that let every participant act on them.
Hedge-IoT as the Missing Piece
HEDGE-IoT provides three capabilities that accelerate scale-up precisely at those pain points:
- Semantic interoperability from day one – Devices are “SAREFized” on arrival. A semantic adapter in our Interoperability Layer turns vendor specific data into a common vocabulary, instantly making any asset discoverable by authorized apps or services.
- Built in flexibility markets – Through the Dutch pilot’s, we can monitor and quantify the campus’s flexibility—shifting EV charging, pre heating offices, or releasing stored solar power—without breaching our fixed DSO capacity. The same API that settles an internal flex today should be able to interface with public market platforms tomorrow.
- Resilience by design – We work on anomaly and fault detection in the Dutch pilot. Machine learning services running on premises to be safe, secure and fast.
Electricity Campus and HEDGE-IoT
Electricity Campus Arnhems Buiten occupies the former KEMA research estate: 40 hectares of landscaped park dotted with national-monument laboratories where companies such as TenneT, DNV Energy Systems and ABB run daily operations. The site lies five minutes from Arnhem Central station—directly linked to Schiphol and Düsseldorf airports—and is governed by a public-private partnership between Oost NL and City Developer-S. Over the next decade the partners will add on-site renewable generation, intelligent balancing systems and three shared R&D hubs focused on digital substation technology, AI-driven grid optimisation and predictive maintenance. In short, the campus offers both a historical testbed and a forward-looking living lab for the entire Dutch energy hotspot.
Additional Electricity Campus is not a “nice-to-have” demonstration site; it sits on one of the most capacity-congested feeders in the eastern Netherlands. Every additional kilowatt we connect must prove—in real time—that it can respect grid limits, exchange data securely, and control flexibility (in markets). By joining HEDGE-IoT we gain a standards-based toolkit that lets us validate those requirements once and then reuse the validation for every future device. In other words, the project turns our campus into a live reference implementation of the digital power-system architecture the Netherlands—and Europe—will need at scale.
The (scaling) Ecosystem
HEDGE-IoT supplies the digital backbone; regional partners from the Electricity Campus help turn that backbone into a self-reinforcing regional innovation loop:
- Oost NL – The development agency co-invests in late-stage pilots that demonstrate tangible regional impact (energy security, job creation, export potential). Scale-ups that first de-risk their hardware or software on the campus gain priority access to this fund, accelerating the leap from prototype to commercial rollout.
- CGI – Provides the hardened middleware and market-coupling code that let pilots graduate straight into production IT landscapes—vital for utilities that cannot tolerate “throw-away” proof-of-concepts.
- ABB became a partner of the campus to provide a broad spectrum of, solutions, knowledge and partners in the domain of (digitalization of) electrification.
- Upcoming HEDGE Open Calls (2026–2027) – SMEs can apply for equity-free grants to integrate their solutions with the campus stack; Oost NL and Electricity Campus jointly mentor the winners and fast-track grid connections.
In our vision, by joining forces and participating, all this effort should lead to (faster)innovation cause of:
- Because each new participant publishes its artefacts as open, every subsequent entrant arrives to a richer library of devices, datasets and optimization modules—compounding the technical value for the entire ecosystem long after the Horizon-Europe project ends.
- Faster onboarding – Ship one prototype instead of fifty. Once semantically registered, researchers at TNO or VU Amsterdam can request live data streams and issue control commands—no middleware rewrite needed.
- Compliance baked in – Because HEDGE-IoT follows Horizon Europe data space and cybersecurity rules, solutions validated here already meet the governance hurdles they will face EU wide.
- Evidence, not anecdotes – Continuous KPI tracking (e.g., cost per kWh shifted, CO2 avoided) means a company leaves the campus with hard numbers investors can trust.
We maintain a dedicated outdoor area for medium and low-voltage equipment trials, a secure on-premises/cloud environment for data-fusion tests, and a growing group of tenants ready to link their buildings, vehicle fleets, or production lines to flexibility studies.
Via Hedge-IoT our ambition is that every campus capability is packaged as a reusable data product, enabling a cold-chain pilot to tap into the very same flexibility engine that has already optimized electric-vehicle fleets, battery storage, rooftop PV and smart-HVAC loads.
Turning the Dutch Congestion Map Green
The Netherlands needs many micro grids to stretch scarce capacity while reinforcements are built. By demonstrating that semantic first, edge secure and market linked operation works today, Electricity Campus is creating a replicable blueprint. Grid operators see lower congestion, businesses gain electrification headroom and technology providers shave months off go to market timelines.
We invite technology developers, researchers, grid operators and investors to collaborate with Electricity Campus and the HEDGE-IoT consortium. Whether you want to pilot hardware, benchmark optimization algorithms, or co-fund the next open call, our team is ready to help you turn latent grid capacity into tangible climate progress.
Contact us via wouterbeelen@electricitycampus.com to explore the options.
[1] CE Delft (2022). Elektriciteitsinfrastructuur Haarlemmermeer. Retrieved from https://ce.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CE_Delft_220105_Elektriciteitsinfrastructuur_Haarlemmermeer_Def.pdf
[2] Boston Consulting Group (2024). Solving the Gridlock. Retrieved from https://web-assets.bcg.com/52/33/1ac49f2747e09b6a5f7ae8003d5b/solving-the-gridlock-eng.pdf
[3] Reuters (7 April 2025). Dutch power grid operator allocates 9 GW via off peak contracts. Retrieved from https://ww w.reuters.com/business/energy/dutch-power-grid-operator-allocates-9-gw-via-off-peak-contracts-2025-04-07/
[4] Netbeheer Nederland (n.d.). Flexibel gebruik van het elektriciteitsnet. Retrieved from https://www.netbeheernederland.nl/netcapaciteit-en-flexibiliteit/flexibel-gebruik-van-het-elektriciteitsnet
