Grid connection: the new bottleneck

A few years ago, the first question in any site search concerned the size of the land and its price. Today it is increasingly something quite different: how much electricity can that site take, and from when. Over recent years, grid connection has quietly taken the leading role — and not every investor notices this in time.

What used to be paperwork is now a schedule

A mid-sized manufacturing plant requires a few megawatts; a data centre or a battery plant many times that. Available capacity, however, is not evenly distributed: two sites twenty kilometres apart may differ by years in when they can be supplied with power. This does not depend on the investor, nor can it be shortened at will with money.

In practice, this means that the connection application belongs at the beginning of the planning process, not towards its end. Site selection and capacity application are now parallel tasks, not sequential ones.

Questions worth asking before anyone signs

• How much free capacity is available at the nearest substation, and how much of it is already reserved?
• How far away is the supply point, and who bears the cost of the cable section?
• Does the site carry an existing, still valid connection right from a former industrial consumer?
• Can the schedule accommodate phased commissioning: starting at lower capacity and expanding later?
• Is there a realistic option for on-site generation or storage to shave off peak loads?

The third question produces the most pleasant surprises. On an abandoned industrial site, the capacity associated with the former consumer often remains in place — one of the most valuable yet most rarely assessed legacies a brownfield site can offer.

Capacity is a property value, not a technical line item

If we compare two similar sites and one of them has a live connection option, the difference is not a few per cent in price. The difference is that one project can start next year and the other in three years' time. The investor pays for that time in its own market, not in the land price.

This is why, for every site, we look first at the energy footprint: what the technology requires, what the grid can deliver, and where the two meet. This review takes a few weeks — the consequences of a poor decision take a few years.