A couple days ago, I came across this tweet documenting a statement from a news anchorman of the Dutch state television (NOS). He made the claim that “Solar panels provide about 2% of our energy needs” [of the Netherlands] (translated from Dutch):
No, @NOS, solar panels do not provide “about 2% of our energy needs”. It was 0.42% in 2017. This year it will surely be more, but not five times as much. #electricityandenergyarenotthesame
Nee, @NOS, zonnepanelen voorzien niet in "ongeveer 2% van onze energiebehoefte". In 2017 was het 0,42%. Dit jaar za… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Remco de Boer (@remcodb) October 21, 2018
That is what I was thinking too. Two percent of the energy need of the Netherlands seems to be a lot. Last time I looked at those numbers, it was closer to 0.5% than to 1%. It would be rather unlikely that this number rose to “about” two percent in roughly one year.
The clip in the tweet came from the NOS news of October 21, 2018 (Dutch). The subject of that news flash was how good the solar generation already was this year. The actual claim was made in the closing words of the news flash (see the screenshot in the tweet).
If that was the only thing in this tweet, then I wouldn’t even bother about it. But when I scrolled down, I stumbled on this response from a Flemish energy expert (translated from Dutch):
And it is not energy but only electrical energy. We already advanced much further in Belgium.
@remcodb @NOS En het is niet energie maar enkel elektrische energie. Op dat punt zijn wij in België al heel verder 😉
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Ronnie Belmans (@RonnieBelmans) October 22, 2018
It confirms the electricity-versus-energy-need error in the news bulletin, but added that we, Belgians, already have a higher share of solar energy in our electricity generation.
Hurrah! 
Again something we are better than our northern neighbors. After the (meaningless) metric of installed capacity per km2, we now are also better in the share of solar energy generation. But how significant is this win and are there consequences involved?
Let’s first look at the numbers. Is that 2% true and how much better are we? Time to fire up the BP data set to check it out. The total energy need of the Netherlands in 2017 was 86.1 Mtoe and solar energy accounted for 0.4 Mtoe. That is 0.46%, much less than the proposed 2%.
The electricity generation by solar of the Netherlands in 2017 was 1.9 TWh on a total generation of 116.6 TWh, meaning 1.63%. The news anchor probably used the data from 2018, so installed capacity would be increased by now and there was a heatwave this summer, so yes, currently the share of solar energy could well be “about” 2% of electricity generation. Nevertheless, this confusing use of “energy needs” is inflating the real number, suggesting a stronger trend than is warranted.
In Belgium, electricity generation by solar in 2017 was 3.1 TWh on a total generation of 86.4 TWh, meaning 3.59%. That is more than double of the solar energy share of the Netherlands. So that part is true, but it comes with consequences that neither of the two mentioned.
It was an exceptional summer this year, so it is not hard to understand that 2018 is a record year for solar. It would be weird if it wasn’t a top year: there is most probably more installed capacity and a long, hot summer extending in a very nice autumn. But it is not guarantied that we have always a good summer and then production will disappoint. I remember for example that the generation of solar energy in Belgium in 2017 was LESS than in 2016:
This despite the fact that installed capacity INCREASED in 2017:
The Netherlands has a different trend. This is the electricity produced by their solar panels:
We don’t see that decreased production of 2017 compared to 2016 in the Netherlands. The reason is that installed capacity is still growing very strong in the Netherlands:
If there wasn’t this strong growth, then this 2017 decrease would have been visible. The capacity factor of solar in 2017 dropped to its lowest level, but this was masked by this growth.
Concluding. Is solar energy 2% of the energy need of the Netherlands? No, the news anchor probably confused between energy use and electricity use. Solar energy is “about” 2% of the electricity use of the Netherlands and less than 0.5% of total energy.
Are we further than the Netherlands now when it comes to the share of solar energy in our electricity use? Well yes, but we saw a slowdown in the last five years and even a decrease in generation of solar energy despite a growing capacity (due to the intermittency of solar power), while the Netherlands are still growing strong. At the point where the Netherlands is now, our growth was also very strong, but it will get more difficult to keep up with that growth as time passes.
via Trust, yet verify
November 4, 2018 at 05:57PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 