The Netherlands added 1.4 GWp of new solar capacity during 2025 , deepening the slowdown in a market that had added 3.3 GWp in 2024 and 5.2 GWp in 2023.
The new Solar Photovoltaic Energy Monitor from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) puts the cumulative capacity at the end of the year at 29.4 GWp , but shows that annual growth was reduced by around 58% compared to 2024 and by more than 70% compared to 2023 .
Photovoltaic generation reached 25.8 TWh in 2025 , equivalent to 19.7% of the country's total electricity production . However, this high penetration rate is beginning to present new challenges for continuing to incorporate projects at the same pace.
Key factors hindering growth include grid congestion, increased uncertainty about facility revenues, and the growing frequency of negative prices . The impact is particularly noticeable among households and small businesses, although large commercial rooftop and park-and-garage systems have also slowed.
The RVO also does not anticipate a significant recovery in the short term. For the period between 2026 and 2028 , it projects average additions of around 1.3 GWp per year , even lower than that recorded during 2025.
One of the biggest uncertainties for the residential segment is the disappearance of the net metering system from January 1, 2027 .
Until now, this mechanism allowed households and small businesses to offset the solar electricity they fed into the grid with their own consumption. However, in recent years, some homeowners have begun facing charges from energy suppliers for feeding their surplus electricity back into the grid.
Meanwhile, available grid capacity became another constraint. Congestion is hindering the connection of new installations and is causing delays and modifications to photovoltaic projects .
The situation worsens during periods of high renewable energy production. On sunny, windy days in spring and summer, generation can increasingly exceed the country's electricity demand.
In 2025 , 581 hours with negative prices were recorded, close to 7% of the hours in the year .
This means that at certain times, large solar projects and users with dynamic contracts may lose money by feeding electricity into the grid. Given this scenario, the RVO warns that owners are increasingly opting to temporarily disconnect their installations .
Batteries and demand management are gaining ground in the face of surpluses
The slower pace of new installations does not mean that solar power is losing ground within the Dutch system, but rather that it forces the market to look for new ways to take advantage of a production that already accounts for almost a fifth of electricity generation.
One solution involves shifting energy consumption to times of peak solar availability. Businesses and households are increasingly using high-consumption equipment when there is a solar surplus, in some cases through energy management systems that automate demand .
Storage is also starting to gain ground, albeit from a still small base. According to the RVO, only between 1% and 2% of households currently have a home battery.
These systems allow you to store part of the surplus produced during daylight hours for later use, avoiding or reducing injection into the grid when prices are low or negative.
The same trend is beginning to extend to larger-scale projects, where more and more solar installations are incorporating batteries to shift electricity delivery to periods of higher demand and value.
With 29.4 GWp already deployed and a projected growth of just 1.3 GWp per year until 2028, the evolution of the market will depend increasingly on how much the congestion can be alleviated and whether new flexibility solutions allow for the recovery of value for solar generation.