Atypical grid use

The idea

Network charges pay for a network built for peak load. A user who does not contribute to that peak, because their own consumption peak predictably falls in other hours, burdens the network less and can therefore agree an individual network charge.

The agreement is made with the grid operator and notified to the regulator; it applies for a calendar year and has to be evidenced again after that. The regulation sets a floor: the individual charge amounts to at least 20% of the published network charge.

What has to be evidenced

What governs are the peak load windows the grid operator defines for its network level. The evidence has to show that the site's own load profile reliably peaks outside those windows, across the period considered rather than in isolated weeks.

The measure is therefore not an average but a statement about peaks. A business with flat load rarely qualifies; one with pronounced night operation or a weekend production peak is more likely to. The second route in the same provision targets connections with very even draw across many utilisation hours and follows its own thresholds.

How solar plays into it

On-site generation changes precisely the quantity at issue: not consumption but draw from the grid. An installation shaves the midday peak and can thereby move the draw peak into the edge hours, which can move the classification in either direction.

A battery has a stronger effect, because it shifts the peak deliberately. Where an installation is already built, the question therefore belongs asked again after commissioning: the load profile an existing agreement rests on is a different one afterwards.

For industrial and logistics sites this is one of the few items in the same order of magnitude as the yield of a rooftop system. An individual network charge moves the cost of drawing power on a large connection noticeably, and it arises with no investment at all, purely from the existing load profile.

For sequence that means reading the load profile before sizing the installation rather than after. It answers three questions at once: how much generation the site absorbs itself, whether a battery pays, and whether an agreement on an individual charge is within reach.

And the agreement belongs treated as what it is: an outcome with an annual term, re-evidenced every year. In a twenty-year model it is a line with renewal risk, not a constant. The framework for individual network charges is also under regulatory revision, so the evidence is prepared against whatever version is in force.