The Netherlands has passed the 3 million solar panel installation mark. This is evident from new market data from the grid operators that comes from the Central Registration of System Elements (CERES).
The grid operators’ counter in CERES stood at 2,891,255 solar panel installations at the end of February. Knowing that not all solar panel installations are actually registered with the grid operators, the Netherlands has recently welcomed the 3 millionth installation with solar panels. The grid operators assume that around 10 percent of the solar panels installed in the Netherlands are not registered.
Megawatt versus megawatt peak
The regional grid operators will immediately publish the CERES data monthly (see box). What is new is that they no longer communicate the registration of solar panel installations for small consumers on the basis of the solar panel power in kilowatt peak (DC power), but expressed on the basis of the inverter power in kilowatts (AC power). The grid operators already did this for large consumers. The CERES register contains all solar panel installations with an inverter capacity of up to 1 megawatt*.
Last January, grid operators reported that 600,048 small consumers in the Netherlands welcomed almost 1.8 gigawatt peak of solar panels last year. At the end of last year, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) counted a total of 23,904 megawatt peaks of solar panels among small and large consumers. The grid operators registered 17,094 megawatts of inverter power from solar panel installations in CERES at the end of last year. It should be noted that CERES only contains data on solar panel installations with a capacity of up to 1 megawatt inverter power. The larger solar panel installations, such as ground-based solar parks, are therefore not included in CERES.
Careful recovery
The new figures from the grid operators show that the registration of new solar panel installations and the associated power was at a low point last December. However, both the number of new installations and the newly commissioned inverter capacity have shown an upward trend again since January, with the registration level still well below the record level of the first half of 2023.
Up to 5 kilowatts
The CERES data shows that consumers started using a record amount of new solar panel installations and the associated inverter power in June 2023. In that month, the grid operators registered 49,426 new solar panel installations in the power category up to 5 kilowatts with a total capacity of 151.7 megawatts. After a sharp decline in the number of new installations and newly registered capacity in the second half of 2023, the upward trend has now started again.
5 to 15 kilowatts
In the power category 5 to 15 kilowatts, not June 2023 but May 2023 set a new record. Since then, the monthly number of registered installations and the associated capacity have fallen almost continuously until early 2024, when the upward trend resumed.
Greater than 15 kilowatts
In the power category of solar panel installations larger than 15 kilowatts, according to the grid operators, approximately 15 to 35 percent of the capacity of the registered PV systems is linked to the power grid via a large-scale consumer connection. In the power category larger than 15 kilowatts, the registration figures of the grid operators peaked last March at a level of 105.2 megawatts. The number of newly registered installations peaked 2 months later in May 2023 at 2,289 units.
In recent months, the newly registered number of installations has fluctuated around 1,000 and the associated capacity around 52 megawatts.
| ‘Current and reliable data is important’ Rolf Heynen, one of the initiators of the National Solar Trend Report, has recently campaigned for the public publication of the CERES data. ‘I have been working hard for more than a decade to improve the data provision on the Dutch solar energy sector,’ says Heynen. ‘This new publication method of the grid operators marks a major step forward for the professionalization of data provision on the Dutch solar energy market. It is important that current and reliable data is available to everyone. Every day, tens of thousands of employees and thousands of companies work to grow solar energy into the backbone of the electricity and soon energy sector. This data is indispensable to them.’ |
Record growth
While CBS registered annual growth of 4,777 and 4,304 megawatt peak for the calendar years 2022 and 2023, the CERES data show a discrepancy with that of CBS.
In CERES, only an inverter capacity of 2,813 megawatts has been registered for 2022 and an inverter capacity of no less than 3,402 megawatts for 2023. It should be noted that the CBS figures for the 2022 calendar year were adjusted significantly upwards last January and this will probably continue to happen for the 2023 calendar year. However, with current figures, there would be almost 70 percent oversizing in 2022 and only 27 percent oversizing in 2023.
| Month of registration The grid operators state that the commissioning date and registration date are virtually identical. However, differences are visible in the summer – they are said to be less than 10 percent – with more solar panel installations delivered than registered during these traditionally busy installation months. In winter, fewer solar panel installations would be installed than registered. |
Installation peak in 2023
Compared to the months of January and February 2023 – the best in history for these 2 specific months – the installation figures in 2024 are significantly lower. In January 2024, the total number of new installations is 36.5 percent lower than in January 2023 and for the month of February 2024 this is 42.3 percent compared to February 2023. For new installations in the power category up to 5 kilowatt peak, the shrinkage is respectively 30.3 and 37.6 percent.
According to the CERES data, the absolute record month is March 2023, when grid operators registered 68,383 new solar panel installations.
Cumulative number of installations
The graph below shows the cumulative number of solar panel installations in CERES per calendar month, with the grid operators assuming that around 10 percent of the installations are not registered and that the actual number of installations has already passed 3 million.
Cumulative capacity of installations
The cumulative registered power by the grid operator passed the 14 gigawatt limit in January last year and will break the 18 gigawatt limit this year.
Most inverter power is registered in the category of solar panel installations with an inverter power greater than 15 kilowatts.
* Important: Because not all solar panel installations are registered via the energieleveren.nl website, the data is by definition incomplete and an underestimate of reality. The network operators suspect that about 10 percent of the installations are not registered.
Would you like to read more statistics about the solar energy market? Then read the special Solar Magazine dossier ‘The hard figures’.
| Disclaimer figures The new figures from the grid operators come from the Central Registration of System Elements (CERES). CERES was introduced several years ago as the successor to the Production Installation Register (PIR). In CERES – which is linked, among other things, to the website EnergieLeveren.nl where consumers are legally obliged to register their solar panels – the regional grid operators register the number of solar panel systems. The CERES register records whether a solar panel installation is connected to a small or large consumer connection. It is important to note that the CERES register only contains solar panel installations with an inverter capacity of up to 1 megawatt – or type A according to the Requirement for Generators (RfG) – and does not yet contain data from large-scale solar parks that are directly connected to TenneT’s high-voltage grid. |
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