Solve grid congestion locally
A fair and sustainable use of our electricity grid starts in your own area. With four building blocks, you create room on the grid for living, working and going sustainable.
The grid isn’t full, it’s unevenly used
In more and more places in the Netherlands, homes and businesses are waiting in line for a grid connection. At the same time, our electricity grid is only half used for much of the day. The pressure is mainly felt in certain places and at certain times.
We certainly need to reinforce our grids, but we don’t have to wait for that. We can already use the existing grid more smartly and more fairly. That starts locally and collectively.
15,498
requests for grid offtake in the queue, June 2026
up to 10 years
of waiting for a connection in congested areas
8.6 million
small-user connections, each with its own fixed capacity
Source: Netbeheer Nederland (the association of Dutch grid operators), as cited in our position paper on grid congestion.
Four building blocks for room on the grid
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Energy community
Residents and businesses organise their energy together. Members share their electricity in one joint energy system: whoever has solar power to spare shares it with the neighbours. With collective flexibility, such as smart charging or a neighbourhood battery, they absorb the peaks together. That way, the area uses the grid as well as possible and costs stay as low as possible.
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Grid capacity cap
Instead of assessing for each connection whether there is room, the grid operator agrees one fixed maximum for a whole area, for all connections together. Within that cap, the area itself decides how the room is used. That way, building and connecting can go ahead, even where the grid is tight.
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Capacity responsibility
The area has to stay within the cap. We call this capacity responsibility, modelled on the balance responsibility (formerly programme responsibility) that the Dutch energy market already knows. That responsibility lies with the party that signs the contract with the grid operator. In our solution, that is the energy community itself, with the residents and businesses that live and work there.
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Local System Operator
The Local System Operator carries out the capacity responsibility in practice, on behalf of the energy community. It monitors the cap, adjusts generation, storage and consumption when things get busy, shares the room fairly within the community and invoices the contracted capacity. Groupp.energy fulfils this role, in cooperation with the grid operator.
The solution: a decentralised energy platform
Groupp.energy is the decentralised energy platform that lets an energy community take these building blocks into its own hands. With groupp community, you organise the community. Around it, we provide the services: sharing and supplying energy, the capacity cap with our role as Local System Operator, and guidance towards self-supply, so the community becomes its own energy supplier.
The solution to grid congestion
A fair and sustainable use of our electricity grid
The four building blocks explained briefly and clearly, for policymakers, grid operators and anyone dealing with grid congestion.
Request the position paperLet’s groupp!
Curious what an energy community could mean for your area? We’re happy to think along with you, whether you’re a developer, municipality, grid operator or energy cooperative.