Examples of behind-the-meter storage models
Country/model
Structure
Notes
Netherlands/group transport
Private, multi-party connection structure
Estimated 6GW of behind-the-meter battery deployment achieved under this structure Take-up slower than the Dutch model; regional and local regulatory variation cited as a factor Enables co-located connections within a Focused initially on demand connections; full framework still some years from completion defined site
agreement (GTA)
Germany/Kundenanlage industrial park model
Private-network structure for co-located
demand and generation
Italy/closed distribution
Comparable private-network framework
systems
Ireland/CRU-developed
IDNO-style rules in development
framework
UK/IDNO
Overarching licence, first awarded in 2004, Not directly replicated elsewhere in portable across multiple sites and regions Europe; enables economies of scale unavailable to single-site private networks
Table 1
transmission bottleneck directly, chiefly by clarifying how the cost of cross-border ‘projects of common interest’ is shared between the member states benefiting from them. In theory, that should make it easier to justify grid reinforcements that serve a wider region rather than a single country. It also promotes planning networks on a more holistic, cross-border basis rather than state by state. This is best understood as a parallel measure, not one that directly fixes battery connection times. Over time, it may make it easier to build the transmission capacity on which storage ultimately depends. However, it will not shorten the queue any given battery project sits in today. That is a critical gap, so what can be done to bridge it? Behind-the-meter and co-located solutions are one way to address the grid connection shortage. Pairing, say, a battery with a generation or demand asset such as a data centre, solar farm, or industrial site, and placing both behind a single connection point can reduce the dependency on the grid. Because demand and generation are partially balanced locally, the connection to the wider network can be smaller, which makes it faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to build. Local storage capacity may be used purely to balance supply and demand behind the meter or be allowed to ‘spill’ back into the network as an
additional source of power. If a large industrial or data centre customer would otherwise be drawing directly from the network, behind-the- meter balancing reduces gross demand: electrons find their way to wherever they are needed. Europe already has some of the regulatory building blocks this needs, even without an independent distribution network operator (IDNO) framework as found within the UK (see Table 1 ). One example, the Netherlands’ group transport agreement structure, has enabled an estimated 6GW of behind-the-meter battery deployment. A second example is Germany’s Kundenanlage industrial park model, which provides a comparable private-network structure, though its take-up has been slower. Italy has its own closed distribution system framework, and Ireland’s regulator, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU), is developing IDNO- style rules for demand connections. None of these is a direct equivalent of the UK’s IDNO model, and Europe does not need to import it wholesale to capture its benefits. A Europe-wide, harmonised version in which a single network operator could build, operate, and recover costs for assets across national borders would be an unnecessarily slow route to faster battery deployment. Arguably, it would also be difficult to reconcile with the different ways individual member states remunerate their networks. More realistic, and more useful, is
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