Target Grid is TenneT's vision of an integrated and cross-border onshore and offshore electricity grid, crucial for the climate-neutral energy system of the year 2045.
Target Grid's complex mission
Connecting new energy sources to the grid everywhere; transporting unprecedented amounts of electricity over land and at sea. These are complex challenges. Based on the end goal, expanding and strengthening the electricity grid is only possible with intensive cooperation, looking ahead, starting now and staying flexible. That is exactly what Target Grid does.
Cooperation and dialogue
TenneT presented the first image of Target Grid in April 2023, with the Target Grid Map, the future image of the 2045 electricity grid. That is the starting point.
In dialogue with stakeholders
This year, TenneT will enter into dialogue with stakeholders and interested parties. Ministries, politics, industry and business, (regional) electricity and gas grid managers, provinces and other stakeholders such as environmental organisations and knowledge institutes, in the Netherlands and Germany. Target Grid continues to develop with the knowledge, insights and needs of all these parties. To ultimately make Target Grid a sustainable approach that is widely supported and forms the new basis for a sustainable economy, with a good entrepreneurial and business climate.
A more complete and further calculated version of the Target Grid Map will be available by the end of 2023. This will incorporate input from conversations with stakeholders.
The future picture that Target Grid forms in this way will also be closely aligned with the Dutch government's vision of the energy system in 2050, the National Energy System Plan 2050, which is currently scheduled to appear in draft form before summer 2023 and, after consultation, should be final by the end of 2023.
Scenario: Maximum Electrification
Target Grid is working with widely supported future scenarios with the highest degree of electrification of society. With this, TenneT is preparing for all scenarios. The electricity grid can be expanded and renewed in time, always with sufficient capacity. Interim adjustments to less capacity or less speed is easier than the other way around.
The scenarios were developed together with Dutch and German governments and grid operators. For the Netherlands, they are the Integrale Infrastructuurverkenning 2030-2050 (II3050), for Germany the Netentwicklungsplan 2023.
Characteristics scenarios
For both the Netherlands and Germany, these high electrification scenarios show the following characteristics:
- Doubling of electricity consumption.
- 40-60% of total energy consumption consists of renewable electricity (now 20%).
- Production of electricity increases more than demand.
- Considerable flexibility in production and consumption is required.
- Each country installs about 70 GW of offshore wind.
Backcasting = 'a future
Backcasting = 'forming a picture of the future and determining from that picture how that future can be achieved. With research into opportunities and actions, which can make that future a reality'.
From the future, to now
With the robust future picture of the Target Grid Map 2045, TenneT can much better determine what is needed to realise the electricity grid of the future. And immediately pick up the right action to do so. How should the grid develop in the coming decades? In which steps can that grid design best be realised? Focusing the design and approach on a grid for the distant future opens up new possibilities. This works differently from chronological planning. This method, backcasting, has surprisingly many advantages for radical changes over a long period of time. Read more
