In the first eight months of this year, 12.6 terawatt hours (TWh) of solar electricity was generated in The Netherlands. That is 12.5 percent more than in the whole of 2021, according to company Zonneplan. The increased number of homes with solar panels and the large number of hours of sunshine so far are the reason for this. Wind energy is also on its way to surpass last year’s figures.
In recent years, the annual output of solar panels has been increasing. Last year, solar panels on roofs and solar parks on land and water jointly produced 11.2 TWh (11.2 billion kilowatt hours), but that record was already broken in August this year. Moreover, in 2021, 21 percent of all solar electricity was generated in the last four months. So there is a good chance that the record yield will rise to around 16 TWh this year. That would be an improvement of more than 40 per cent compared to last year.
The wind in the sails
In addition to power from solar panels, wind energy is also making strong advances. Although so far this year the sun has generated slightly more electricity than the wind, the balance will still change in the coming months. If the same pattern as last year is followed, the yield from wind turbines this year will be between 19 and 20 TWh, whereas last year it was 16.8.
Whereas solar panels still had a share of just under 25 percent compared to wind turbines in 2018, that had already grown to 40 percent last year. With the enormous interest in solar panels that has been evident since last October, it seems a matter of time before solar panels start generating more electricity than wind turbines. If the current trend continues, there is a good chance that this will already be the case next year.
