The Netherlands entirely powered by solar energy: is it possible?

Imagine it’s December 21. The sun barely rises above the horizon. And yet: today, the Netherlands is running entirely on solar power and batteries. No gas-fired power plants. No wind turbines. Just the power of light. In this article, we explore how far we can go with the sun as our sole energy source. Where are the bottlenecks? Can we live in this gray little country on solar power alone?

The short days of winter

Our daily electricity consumption is around 330 gigawatt-hours. In winter, the output of a solar panel is dramatically low. The sun is low in the sky. The days are short. To supply the Netherlands with electricity on the shortest day of the year, we need six to eight times more panels. This requires a massive amount of space. Panels cast extremely long shadows in December. You can’t place them too close together. Otherwise, they block each other’s light. In this scenario, we need 2,500 to 3,500 square kilometers of solar farms. That’s more than six to eight percent of our total land area. You’d have to cover nearly every pasture with blue panels. Even the Vondelpark wouldn’t escape a glass roof. This is, of course, undesirable. But it does show that it’s not theoretically impossible to run solely on solar power and batteries. Just impractical. With so many panels, we’d also create a massive problem for the summer. We’d then have an unmanageable surplus of electricity in July. So we can’t solve the winter problem just by installing more panels in open fields. We need to use the energy the sun provides more intelligently. We need to expand solar panel capacity, but above all, we need to store energy. First, the expansion. Currently, only 0.4 percent of the Netherlands is covered with solar panels. That’s about 157 square kilometers. We therefore need to look at areas we’re already using. The shadow cast by a solar panel isn’t a problem. Especially not if there’s already something underneath that doesn’t need sunlight.

The parking lot as a power plant

Take a look outside and count the parked cars. The Netherlands has nearly 19 million parking spaces. All these spaces together cover an enormous area. We have built a gigantic empire of asphalt for vehicles that are stationary. Here lies a huge opportunity for so-called solar carports. These are canopies over parking lots covered with solar panels. The car stays dry and cool. The roof above generates electricity. Research shows that approximately 80 square kilometers of parking space is immediately suitable for these canopies. That amounts to about 3.2 million parking spaces. You don’t sacrifice nature. You don’t have to claim farmland. It’s the ultimate form of efficiency. Moreover, this solution directly helps alleviate overloaded power grids. Researchers estimate that we can reduce local peak loads on the power grid by thirty to seventy percent. We do this by combining the solar panels with local batteries. The generated electricity charges the cars during the day. The rest flows into the grid later. This way, we can potentially accommodate 5 gigawatts of peak additional solar energy in areas that are currently off-limits. It’s low-hanging fruit that we still too often ignore. Currently, less than one percent of this potential is being utilized. Moreover, a covered parking lot looks a lot more modern than a bare expanse with white lines.

Summer Heat in a Sandbox

Even with millions of panels above our cars, the core problem remains. In the summer, we have too much power. In the winter, we have too little. The solution is seasonal bridging. We literally need to store the summer sun for the Christmas holidays. One of the most promising technologies comes from Finland. That’s where the world’s first commercial sand battery is in operation. The principle is surprisingly simple. You fill a massive, well-insulated silo with inexpensive sand. In the summer, you use excess solar power to heat this sand to 600 degrees Celsius. Sand retains heat extremely well. The heat remains stored in the silo for months. When winter sets in, you pump the heat out of the sand. This heat goes directly to the district heating network. It’s a robust and inexpensive way to store energy. You don’t need expensive metals like lithium. You avoid complicated chemical processes. You just use a very large pile of hot sand. This technique is ideal for heating entire neighborhoods. It shows that the solution to complex energy problems sometimes lies in a simple sandbox. It’s a tangible way to harvest summer heat. This is how we safely store energy for the cold, dark days.

Rust as the new fuel

In addition to sand, another down-to-earth solution is on the rise. Scientists at Eindhoven University of Technology are working on a system using iron powder. This material serves as a circular battery. The process operates as a closed loop. In the summer, you use green electricity to convert rust into iron powder. This powder can be stored safely and cheaply in large silos. In the winter, you burn the iron powder in a special facility. This releases an enormous amount of heat for industrial use. Not a single gram of CO2 is released. The only byproduct is rust powder again. You collect this and store it for the following summer. The technology is now making the leap to the market. The company RIFT recently raised 114 million euros to scale up the technology commercially. The figures are promising. By 2026, the cost of this industrial heat will be approximately 7.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. This makes it directly competitive with natural gas. Iron powder has a very high energy density. You can store a lot of energy in a small space. It is an ideal replacement for coal and gas in existing power plants. You reuse the old infrastructure for a state-of-the-art, clean fuel. Generating energy from rust sounds like magic. Yet it is now a harsh reality.

How do we get through the night?

The seasonal rhythm is the biggest challenge if we want to rely entirely on the sun. But we can’t ignore the night; it’s precisely when it’s dark that we need power.

That’s where batteries come in, and they’re already growing in popularity. From home batteries to massive “battery power plants.” And here, too, exciting developments are on the horizon; the latest battery is the sodium-ion battery. It’s heavier than the lithium battery, but it doesn’t need to be transported anywhere, so that’s not a problem.

Recent research shows that salt batteries are already competing with lithium batteries. Prices are expected to fall even further. Production is also straightforward. Manufacturers can easily adapt existing production lines for lithium batteries. This makes us less dependent on scarce raw materials on the global market. Cheaper batteries do not directly lead to more solar panels. They do, however, ensure a massive increase in storage capacity. This is how we keep the power grid affordable and in balance.

The path to energy autonomy

So we could power the Netherlands entirely on solar energy. Even during the dark winter months, it is theoretically possible. But should we really want this? Probably not. After all, we also have offshore wind turbines. Perhaps we will build new nuclear power plants in the future. Still, this thought experiment teaches us an important lesson: we absolutely no longer need coal or gas. Solar power is currently the cheapest electricity we have. Of course, stored solar power is slightly more expensive. But the technology proves that we can do without fossil fuels. This greatly strengthens our European independence. We remain in control of our own energy. That is an extremely reassuring thought. The future is bright. We just need to choose wisely how we use that light.