Siemens partners with Alliander to accelerate flexible grid management in the Netherlands
Siemens and Alliander, a major Dutch network company, with its daughter company Liander, the biggest Dutch distribution system operator (DSO) in the Netherlands, have entered a strategic partnership to accelerate the energy transition and tackle key challenges in distribution grid management. Siemens’ Gridscale X platform will be used by Alliander to reduce grid congestion and increase grid utilization. It is estimated that this partnership could extend the grid usage in the Netherlands by 10 to 30 percent.
Alliander is an energy utility company that distributes gas and electricity in the Netherlands, serving approximately 3.5 million customers. With more than half of Dutch energy now coming from renewable sources and increasing customer demand (with waiting lists up to 10 years), ensuring reliable energy supply and grid stability is essential. Flexibility is crucial to address these challenges, as it can help identify which grid segments require capacity upgrades, and which can be managed by flexibility, optimizing resource allocation, and reducing unnecessary costs, to connect customers faster.
"Flexibility management is vital for a sustainable and resilient grid, making it possible to efficiently integrate renewable energy sources and meet the evolving demands of our modern energy system. That is why we are delighted to combine forces with a key ecosystem partner such as Alliander. Using our Gridscale X platform, they will be able to increase their flexibility management capabilities, and scale their customer satisfaction,” said Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Siemens Grid Software.
Daan Schut, Chief Transition Officer and Member of the Board of Alliander, added "Alliander faces immense challenges with the energy transition, resulting in customers awaiting grid connections. To tackle this, over the past few years we have been developing and building solutions that enable Alliander to increase grid utilization. We follow an open strategy and are willing to cooperate with other DSOs and industry partners. The vision is to create an ecosystem of organizations building and operating solutions fit to handle the challenges of the energy transition. Partnering and sharing knowledge of software with Siemens allows us to leverage their open and interoperable software to develop solutions that will help us ensure a more stable, sustainable grid for our customers.”
About Gridscale X
Gridscale X is a software platform that paves the way for autonomous grid management. It is part of Siemens Xcelerator, an open digital business platform that enables customers to accelerate their digital transformation easier, faster, and at scale. Gridscale X LV Insights (which will be used by Alliander) supports DSOs to create a valid, ready-to-use digital representation (digital twin) of the physical grid, serving as a single source of truth. This digital twin supports the continuous and automated steps of detecting, assessing, and acting, enabling DSOs to prioritize investments effectively and quickly leverage untapped grid capacity while maintaining reliability.