Grid connection commitment (Netzanschlusszusage)

Four entries everything else follows from

A commitment worth the name states the Verknüpfungspunkt, the point in the network where power is fed in, the committed connection capacity in kilowatts, the voltage level, and a date. Alongside those sits the split of costs between grid operator and connecting party, usually including a Baukostenzuschuss.

The connection point carries the most leverage, because it moves two unrelated blocks of cost: the distance to it is a cable route the connecting party pays for, and the voltage level there decides whether transformation and switchgear are needed. A point two kilometres further away is rarely a detail.

What a commitment is not

A network capacity study is not a commitment, a reservation is not a commitment, and an indication subject to further review is not a commitment. All three appear in project files exactly where a commitment ought to be, and all three leave open whether the capacity will be there.

Nor is a commitment a guarantee of unrestricted export. Whether the capacity is absorbed at all times follows network conditions and the rules on curtailment. A commitment for 750 kW and a model exporting 750 kW in every sunlit hour are not the same statement.

The expiry date

Commitments carry deadlines: one to accept, one to start construction and one to commission. Let one lapse and the committed capacity returns to the network, with any fresh request queuing behind everything filed since. In a congested network area that reversal is the most expensive schedule slip in the whole project.

For any valuation this is the document read first, and it is read on four lines: point, capacity, date, cost split. Everything else in the project can be computed once those four are fixed, and none of it can be computed while one is missing.

Two mistakes dominate. The first is confusing requested capacity with committed capacity: the model carries what was applied for while the file holds something smaller. The second is the offset between the commitment and the planning consent, where the two sets of deadlines do not interlock but merely happen to overlap.

So underwriting needs one schedule that lists every deadline side by side: the commitment's, the consent's, the lease's, and the validity of the construction quote. The earliest of those dates is the expiry date of the entire ready-to-build status, and it is seldom set by the document one would suspect.