Industrial Heat in the Netherlands:
From fuel exposure to cost control

Most energy conversations in the Netherlands center on electricity. But for industrial companies, the bigger financial risk sits somewhere else: heat.

Sectors like food and beverage, dairy, paper and agriculture still run their steam production on natural gas. The past few years showed what happens when gas markets move. TTF price spikes, geopolitical instability and tighter carbon regulation turned heat from a predictable line item into one of the most volatile costs on the balance sheet.

For any company running continuous high temperature processes, this volatility hits the effective heat price per ton of steam directly.

Heat is a structural risk

Industrial processes need temperatures between 120 and 300 degrees Celsius, sometimes higher. Pasteurization, drying, sterilization, processing. These are not loads you turn off. They are the core of your operations.

When gas prices spike, your margins shrink. When CO2 prices go up, your operating costs follow. Long term contracts soften the short term impact, but they do not remove the structural exposure. The question is not whether fossil fuel prices will move again. The question is how much of your production cost still depends on those movements.

A different way to produce heat

Suncom built the SunFleet around integration, not substitution. Rather than swapping gas for one alternative, the system brings three technologies together:

SunArc for concentrated solar thermal generation. Power to Heat for converting electricity into thermal energy. SunTES for high temperature thermal storage. Each one serves a specific function. Together, they change how your facility produces and manages heat.

SunArc generates high temperature heat directly from sunlight, which cuts your structural fuel demand. Power to Heat converts electricity into thermal energy when market prices are low. SunTES stores that heat at temperatures suited for industrial steam, so you separate when you generate from when you use it.

This integration is what makes the system work.

Power to Heat in the Dutch electricity market The Dutch electricity market shows growing price swings. Strong wind and solar output push prices down. Scarcity periods drive them up. With Power to Heat built into the SunFleet, you convert low priced electricity into stored heat. When electricity prices climb, you pull from stored thermal energy instead of buying expensive power from the grid. This gives you flexibility. You reduce your exposure to peak pricing without full electrification and without heavy grid upgrades.

Thermal storage is the stabilizing layer

Storage is not an add-on in this system. It is what holds everything together. Without storage, renewable heat depends on real time availability. With storage, heat becomes dispatchable. You generate when the economics are right and deliver when production needs it. SunTES stores heat at temperatures up to 475 degrees Celsius. That stored energy feeds your existing steam headers through standard heat exchangers or steam generators. You integrate into your current infrastructure with minimal disruption.

The result is a hybrid setup. Solar heat and stored energy cover a large share of your base demand. Gas stays as backup. Electricity gets used when it makes financial sense.

Keep your effective heat price under control

For the people making the investment decisions, the number that matters is the long term Levelized Cost of Heat. By reducing the share of heat tied to fossil fuels, you lower your exposure to gas market swings and carbon pricing increases. The SunFleet does not remove all risk. It reduces your dependence on a single external fuel source and adds flexibility to your energy system. That flexibility carries real financial value when markets are unpredictable.

A strategic move for Dutch industry

The Netherlands sits at a crossroads of high industrial heat demand, rising carbon costs and growing grid congestion. Traditional energy strategies are losing their resilience under these conditions. Suncom’s integrated system offers a different path. By combining solar thermal generation, Power to Heat and high temperature storage in one modular system, you redesign your heat supply around stability and control instead of fuel dependency.

Source: Trading Economics

The pattern is not limited to the Netherlands. In Spain, the MIBGAS index recently showed a 50% price increase, jumping from around 30 to over 54 EUR/MWh in a matter of weeks.

Spanish industry faces the same structural exposure. Most of the gas consumed in Spain does not go to electricity production. It goes to industrial heat in sectors like food processing, chemicals, paper and ceramics. These are the sectors where gas price movements hit operating costs directly and where margins are most vulnerable to sustained volatility.

For Spanish industrial companies running continuous thermal processes, the question is the same as for their Dutch counterparts. How long do you keep your heat supply fully tied to a fuel source that moves this unpredictably? The SunFleet system works in the Spanish market with an added advantage: higher direct solar irradiance increases the output from SunArc concentrated solar thermal generation. Combined with Power to Heat and SunTES high temperature storage, this gives Spanish industry a practical route to reduce gas dependence while keeping heat supply stable and costs predictable.