Too many batteries, not enough grid: Germany’s battery storage sector wants fixes for connection waits
The “Large-Scale Battery Storage Cooperation Forum” was established in August 2025 under the umbrella of the Research Centre for Energy Economics (FfE or “Forschungsstelle für Energiewirtschaft”). It was driven by the many uncertainties and challenges facing the storage industry at the time: a genuine boom in grid connection requests for large-scale battery systems was running headlong into severely constrained grid connection capacity and overstretched grid operators.
To structure the debate, four action areas were identified upfront, each requiring defined challenges and solutions: grid connection requests, flexible grid connection agreements, storage grid fees, and co-location. In total, 58 companies from the grid and storage sectors took part.
On Wednesday this week, the FfE published the resulting discussion paper, accompanied by an event held at the Berlin headquarters of transmission system operator 50Hertz. The paper is aimed primarily at policymakers and regulators, but also at grid and storage operators.
The hope expressed was that cooperation forum had become “too big to fail” — participation had far exceeded expectations, and even where full agreement wasn’t possible, the discussions had helped raise awareness of the various problem areas among all involved.
It should be noted that the political landscape has shifted considerably since the forum’s first discussions took place. A draft bill recently leaked from the German parliament that would give transmission operators greater latitude in designing their own grid connection procedures. According to Jan Zacharias of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, the cabinet is expected to discuss the bill towards the end of Q1 (and he noted that the draft was not actually meant to have reached the public!).
Criticism of the weighting criteria in the maturity assessment process
The maturity assessment process was also a central topic at the Berlin event. During a panel discussion, Urban Windelen, Managing Director of the German Energy Storage Association (BVES), made clear that he does not consider the process appropriate for storage systems. He argued they were being lumped in with other large-scale facilities such as data centres, which fails to reflect their role in the energy system. He was not alone in criticism from other participants.
Standardization of FCAs
Flexible grid connection agreements — or FCAs — present another major challenge, not least because standardization is still lacking. Currently, every FCA is basically a one-off, as there is no agreed vision for what these agreements are meant to achieve. Objectives range from accelerating grid connections to maintaining grid stability to reducing grid expansion costs. In particular, the operational restrictions that grid operators are imposing on storage systems are in some cases far-reaching enough to threaten the economic viability of individual projects. “We recommend stronger standardization of the restrictions that can be agreed in FCAs, and propose possible parameters for fair compensation of those restrictions,” the forum participants stated.
Co-location
The fourth action area being tackled by the German forum was co-location, and five approaches were developed to unlock the potential of this solution to beat grid-connection issues, across the scope of German regulations and requirements. At the Berlin event, Karsten Bourwig, Chair of Decision Chamber 8 at the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), was present in person. He announced further key publications for May. Bourwig also stressed that his agency recognises the importance of storage, but added that storage is not inherently grid-friendly by nature and can itself drive the need for grid expansion. This, he said, should be reflected in the redesign of grid fees, while avoiding double charging on energy volumes.
From pv magazine Germany.
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