About 4,500 planned homes in Groningen currently have no available capacity on the electricity grid. The shortage affects 17 of 68 housing projects assessed by Enexis, particularly in Meerstad and Stadshavens, according to OOG’s 7 October report on a municipal letter. The other 51 projects, comprising more than 5,100 homes, have capacity reserved.
The assessment concerns projects due to start within three years. How the shortage will affect their construction schedules remains unclear. These are planned homes awaiting capacity; the figure does not describe occupied properties without electricity.
On Monday, 12 October, OOG reported that councillors Ceciel Nieuwenhout of PRO and Rosalie van der Heide of ChristenUnie were asking the municipality to investigate ways to accommodate new neighbourhoods within the available grid capacity. Their proposals include managing electricity demand across an entire neighbourhood, local generation, batteries and coordinated electric-car charging.
For people trying to find somewhere to live, this introduces another question to ask about a promised development: when will it have the electricity capacity needed for residents to move in?
The Dutch term for the problem is netcongestie. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO, explains that electricity networks have limits on how much power they can carry simultaneously. Demand and generation are increasing, while the network has not yet adapted sufficiently. At busy moments, cables and substations cannot accommodate every additional request. Housing developments can consequently face waiting lists, later starts or construction in phases.
This makes timing as important as total consumption. Designing a neighbourhood to draw less power during the busiest periods could help it fit within the available capacity. That is the principle behind the measures Groningen’s councillors want examined.
According to OOG, they point to approaches in Utrecht and Arnhem that allocate a power budget to a neighbourhood as a whole. Nieuwenhout also identifies coordinated charging in facilities such as those planned for Stadshavens as a possible way to reduce peaks. These are proposals for investigation; the report does not establish that they have secured connections for the affected Groningen projects.
The scale of the problem extends beyond the city. In a statement on 17 September, Enexis said developers had submitted approximately 140,000 homes under a transitional application scheme covering projects whose construction should start within three years. Capacity was available for around 54,000; approximately 86,000 would enter a waiting list. These figures cover Enexis’s service area, rather than Groningen alone or the entire Netherlands.
Since 1 July, the operator says, new applications in congested areas fall under a shared waiting-list system for small and large connections, with capacity allocated according to social-priority rules. The previous reservation for future growth in small connections has ended. Housing’s social importance therefore matters to its position in the process, but does not itself create extra physical capacity.
Groningen’s own rules make that limitation explicit. Its policy for requesting electricity capacity for housing projects, in force since September, states that inclusion on the municipality’s project list creates an obligation to try to obtain capacity. It does not guarantee availability or allocation. The rules also require municipal projects to be assessed under the same framework as developers’ projects.
That is a useful distinction when reading a development announcement. Planning approval, a place in an application process, reserved electricity capacity and a confirmed move-in date each answer a different question. For a future resident, the last of those depends on the others being resolved.
For students, the implications require care. The 4,500 figure has not been presented as a count of student rooms. It would be misleading to turn it into a claim that thousands of student beds have been cancelled.
There is nevertheless a plausible wider housing effect. If people cannot move into new homes, they may remain longer in their existing accommodation, slowing the movement that makes other properties available. Whether that affects student rooms, graduate apartments or rents depends on the homes involved and who would have moved into them. The current figures cannot quantify that effect.
The starting position is already difficult: the University of Groningen’s accommodation guidance describes high demand and limited availability in both Groningen and Leeuwarden. Future construction announcements should therefore be treated as information about potential supply, rather than accommodation a student can already rely on.
Anyone considering a room or apartment in a forthcoming development can ask the provider three concrete questions: has sufficient electricity capacity been confirmed for this project, does the advertised move-in date depend on an unresolved connection, and what happens to the booking and any money paid if delivery slips? Written answers make it easier to compare offers and decide whether a backup is needed.
Enexis says its response combines network expansion with better use of existing capacity. It reported investments in the first half of 2026 were 22% higher than a year earlier, while calling for land, faster permitting and measures that reduce peak demand. Those are its wider measures; they do not provide a completion date for an individual Groningen development.
OOG’s 7 October report said Enexis expected more clarity by the end of October, following TenneT’s mid-month study of the high-voltage network. That is a date to watch for information, rather than a promised connection date.
For Groningen, the next useful housing update should connect each affected project to a realistic timetable: which homes can proceed, which need changes and when future residents can expect reliable answers. A housing target becomes meaningful to someone searching for a room when it can be translated into an address and a date.
