The market is misreading Brabant
Everyone is watching Tilburg. TenneT has announced 405 MW of additional capacity there for 2027, and the headline "capacity opens up in Brabant" made the rounds. It sounds like good news for the whole region. It is not. This edition shows three shifts that change the interpretation of the Brabant congestion. Read in isolation, they are three data points. Read together, they show where companies are choosing the wrong location today, and where headroom appears first.
Decision lens
If your team is screening Brainport, the question is not whether the region is red. The question is which layer is constrained, what changed this week, and what should stay on the watchlist. That is what this issue answers.
Signal #1 The map shows red. The blockage sits one layer deeper.
On the Netbeheer Nederland capacity map, Brainport shows red for offtake almost everywhere. Yet three of the seven service areas studied still have headroom on the regional Enexis grid (green or yellow): Best, Eindhoven Zuid and Maarheeze.
The total map is red because the constraint sits on the TenneT transmission grid, not on the regional grid. A connection is therefore not always immediate, since an application can still land on the waitlist through the TenneT layer. But the map color hides where the blockage actually is, and therefore where headroom appears once TenneT relieves the constraint.
This is exactly why companies write off the wrong locations. Anyone going by the total color crosses out these three areas. Anyone who splits the layers sees where the first movement will come from.
Source: capaciteitskaart Netbeheer Nederland, afname-laag, peildatum June 2026.
Signal #2 405 MW sounds like good news. For half the region, it is not.
The +405 MW via station Tilburg in 2027 is real. But the effect differs so sharply per sub-area that the regional headline is misleading.
For the Eindhoven sub-grid, from 2027 almost all customers can be connected, with one exception: station Hapert. But the core area of Northeast Brabant, with the bottleneck between Helmond-Oost and Helmond-Zuid, stays locked until station Wijchen is ready. TenneT does not expect that until 2033 to 2036.
Within the same region there is therefore a gap of almost ten years between "developable almost immediately" and "locked until deep into the 2030s". That distinction never makes the headlines.
A location choice based on "Brabant opens up in 2027" can easily be a project that stalls until 2035. The difference is not in the region, but in the sub-grid and the station.
Source: TenneT congestieonderzoek Brabant, April 2026.
Signal #3 The queue decides the order, not who calls first
In the Brainport region, 348.4 MW worth of applications sit in the queue.
That queue is not background information, it is the allocation key. Capacity that becomes available in 2027 or later does not go to the fastest applicant, but is allocated according to the queue and the applicable priority rules. A party entering at a station with a short queue is in a completely different position than a party behind hundreds of megawatts.
Anyone who does not know the queue per station is gambling on timing. Anyone who does know it, knows where the odds are best.
Source: wachtrijgegevens regionale netbeheerder, Brainport, peildatum 2026.
What we are watching for #002
Three signals to watch:
- Station Hapert. Still red due to the TenneT layer, with congestion expected until 2032-2034. If the timeline here shifts, the picture changes for the entire southwest of the region.
- Progress around station Wijchen. This station is the key for Northeast Brabant. Any shift in the timeline (earlier or later than 2033-2036) directly affects the developability of the Helmond area.
- The queue around the three green areas. Best, Eindhoven Zuid and Maarheeze have regional headroom. How fast that queue fills up determines how long that window stays open.
If Wijchen genuinely moves forward, we expect pressure on the three currently-green areas to increase quickly, as developers shift toward them. A signal to watch, not a prediction.
What is in the full analysis
This edition shows the picture at regional level. The underlying analysis goes deeper per station and per area:
- the capacity status of all 7 service areas studied, with the regional and TenneT layers separated
- station figures for, among others, Eindhoven West, Helmond Zuid and Best, verified from Enexis reports
- the queue linked per area, not only the regional total
- the expansion timeline per station, with reference date and source
The evidence behind every claim is traceable per area and available on request.
Sources and confidence
This edition combines four types of public sources, per service area:
- Status layer: capaciteitskaart Netbeheer Nederland (afname), reference date June 2026. This is the official map color, not an underlying congestion study with MW figures.
- Transmission layer and planned works: TenneT congestieonderzoek Brabant, April 2026, including the sub-grid breakdown and the timeline around station Wijchen.
- Queue: wachtrijgegevens of the regional grid operator for the Brainport areas, reference date 2026.
- Station detail: Enexis-stationsonderzoeken for the individual stations.
Where a figure concerns the official map status rather than a measured MW value, it is labeled as such.
Forward internally
Forward this internally if your team is asking: Which Brainport locations are still worth screening? Is the constraint regional or transmission-level? Which grid signals changed recently? Where should we watch for capacity-change updates?
Grid Intelligence is published by Wattlas. A new edition follows as soon as the data shifts. To respond or request the underlying source table: [email protected]