Here in Sweden the grids was built by taxpayers and then sold off to a private company for maintenance and operation. That went as well as you can expect. Future development and growth is basically impossible as the private company has zero incentive or interest in laying new wire or upgrading old.
All of a sudden that has changed (thanks to demand from EV’s, heat pumps and AI).
It’s going to take a while to turn the ship around.
This kind of profiteering by intentionally constraining supply when there was very high demand was literally something Enron became infamous for, but it still happens all around the world.
Of course, on the transmission and distribution side you can’t even try to have a market and there is always a natural monopoly, it’d just be impossible for anyone to overbuild a new grid in any service area. So turning a state-owned natural monopoly into a private one tends to turn out just as badly as anyone could expect…
Also noteworthy is that the problems in one country are also problems in other countries, as these grids are all interconnected.
European countries need major investments in Electricity generation and their grids, Energy costs need to come down for European manufacturing to survive.
Personally I think that solar and wind energy are good technologies, but the specific ways that that transition has been implemented, at least here in Germany, was abysmal. Plagued by incompetence and mismanagement, this has had a severe impact on the economy and the ability of German energy intensive companies to survive.
This is very sensible. You can't build a grid that supports a large part of the country coming home at 5pm: start the oven (and/or induction cooking), heatpump, laundry, connect the electric car all at the same time.
There are probably some cases when people have to charge a car at 5pm, but it's madness that everyone will start doing this just because that's the time they get home.
Keep in mind; 11kW charging at home is not uncommon at the Netherlands, as many homes are equipped with 400V 3 phase power.
I wonder what the issue is. Is it production, or distribution? If it's production, there's no excuse for that, build nuclear. If it's distribution, is it due to environmental concerns, or NIMBYs?
fsagx•5h ago