What have we learned?

Alliander always aims to perform its duties and activities to the best of its ability. That said, certain incidents, developments and events can still have unforeseen consequences. We want to learn from these experiences so we can continue to enhance the quality of our organisation. In this section, we present some key moments and events in 2018.

Major outage in Amsterdam

What happened?

On 9 March 2018, the centre of Amsterdam was struck by a major power outage when a cable was accidentally cut, causing a short circuit and leading to substantial damage to the Frederiksplein distribution substation. A bystander sustained burns, and the highly complex, large-scale outage left 28,000 customers without power for a long time.

What have we learned?

As soon as the outage was over, we launched a detailed investigation into its causes. We can learn from the findings of this investigation, which will help us prevent this situation from reoccurring. The findings will also help improve safety for our employees and customers. The cause of the outage turned out to be a safety system that was not working properly. If a live cable is cut, this causes a short circuit. In such situations, the cable is normally switched off by a safety system within a few seconds, but this did not happen in Amsterdam due to a defective fuse. 
We introduced measures in response to this outage. A system that constantly monitors the safety systems has been installed in nearly all of the 250 stations in our service area, enabling us to prevent similar incidents. This system still needs to be installed in a small number of stations, and we expect that this will happen by the end of March 2019. Until that time, technical specialists from Liander will continue to check the safety systems on a regular basis.

Waiting for gas and electricity in Heiloo

What happened?

In 2018, 80 new-build homes in Heiloo had to wait longer than agreed for their connections to mains services, including gas and electricity. Here, the delay was attributable to the shortage of technicians as well as a combination of circumstances. Among other things, work was affected by plummeting temperatures at the start of the year. The contractor was supposed to start building the infrastructure in June, but was unable to do so because scaffolding made part of the route inaccessible. Moreover, some of the apartments were not watertight or windproof at the time of completion. This meant that the task had to be rescheduled, and the contractor’s earliest start date was the end of September.

What have we learned?

We held a frank discussion with the parties involved, including the builder. It appears that we could have made a start on various activities if there had been more effective communication. It is therefore crucial that we sit down with each other to look at the details and maintain an ongoing dialogue. The sooner we know what customers such as municipalities and contractors are intending to do, the better we are able to make plans and combine work. 

Rise of solar fields needs to be planned

What happened?

The energy supply is well on its way to becoming more sustainable. There is currently an upsurge in plans for new solar fields, thanks to the fall in the price of solar panels and the favourable climate as far as subsidies are concerned. Many developers are moving to sparsely populated areas where land is inexpensive. These are also the least dense areas of the electricity grid. Feeding much larger amounts of electricity into the network will require significant network upgrades. The rate at which electricity grid can be expanded is not fast enough to keep up with rising demand for new connections for solar parks. As a consequence, there are now some places where the network is full and needs to be expanded first.

What have we learned?

Laying cables and building or expanding transformer stations often takes years. This is due to such factors as permit procedures, consultation exercises and a shortage of technicians able to carry out the work. First and foremost, more government direction is required. Thanks to the planning at a provincial level, we already know at an early stage where wind farms will be located, which means we can prepare our network upgrades in good time. At the moment, there is no planning process of this kind for large-scale solar fields. In the context of solar parks, too, reaching proper agreement at an early stage with all parties involved is important and government direction is advisable. We are also calling for this at Alliander.