Who gets a grid connection first? In Germany that question has turned into a dispute between battery developers and the companies that actually need power. According to a report in Tagesspiegel Background that Clean Energy Wire summarised on 23 October, the federal economy ministry now plans to secure transmission grid access for data centers and industrial users by law.
346 Requests, 147 GW
The reason is in the queue. Germany's four transmission system operators received 346 connection requests in the first half of 2026, together asking for 147 GW. Battery storage makes up most of them. At 50Hertz, 141 of 179 requests, some 70 GW, were for batteries, and the other operators report a similarly high share. Industrial companies and data center developers stand in the same line, and many of them are waiting.
The operators changed the rules in April. A maturity assessment procedure replaced first come, first served, under which they had to process requests in order without asking whether a site was suitable or a project likely to be built. Tagesspiegel nevertheless reports that, even under the new procedure, most of the expansion capacity in the coming years would still go to storage. Earlier in October the operators asked politicians for clear guidelines on how to prioritise, and the head of TenneT Germany said that the way scarce grid capacity is allocated shapes investment and jobs.
What Waiting Does To Site Plans
Data center operators complain that connections take too long, and some are building their own power. The Clean Energy Wire report says this often includes new gas capacity. It quotes estimates of connection times of up to seven years from the International Energy Agency and 10 to 15 years from the utility RheinEnergie. These are estimates by third parties, not figures from the ministry.
The coalition has already moved on the distribution grid side. In July, the report notes, the CDU/SPD coalition announced legislation to give industrial connections priority at distribution level, and at the end of July it agreed a grid connection package that would cut the compensation paid for curtailing new renewable plants in areas with existing bottlenecks. The new plan for the transmission level would be a third step. The report gives no date for a draft.
A Question For The Planning Stage
If a grid date cannot be relied on, generating sets or gas engines on site stop being an emergency measure and become part of the schedule: first as a bridge, perhaps later as a permanent second source. That brings the usual list of questions about fuel supply, permits and heat rejection forward to the start of the project rather than the end. It is also a reason to read the connection offer as carefully as the equipment quotation. See our pages on data centers and power generation.
Sources: Clean Energy Wire, Gas to Power Journal
