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You have seventeen electric trucks on order, or you want to expand the cold store. You apply for a heavier connection and you are told you are on the waiting list. With no firm date. Across large parts of the Netherlands, that is now the standard answer.

For a distribution centre, that is a harder problem than for an office building. Your charging demand is fixed in the trip schedule, your refrigeration cannot be switched off, and your tenant or parent company has a 2030 electrification target that will not move. Waiting is not a strategy.

The good news: a full grid connection is almost never a connection that is full. It is a connection that is full for a few moments each day.

TL;DR

A waiting list for a grid upgrade is no reason to postpone your electrification.

  • On most logistics sites, contracted capacity is fully used for only a fraction of the day. For the rest of the day, capacity sits idle.
  • At logistics depots, smart control typically unlocks 20 to 40 per cent more usable capacity within the existing connection.
  • Capacity charges are based on your highest peak of the month, not your average consumption. One badly timed charging session sets your bill.
  • At Lidl in Almere, seventeen e-trucks and six 350 kW fast chargers operate within the limits of grid congestion, linked to Lidl’s trip planning system.
  • Sometimes an upgrade really is the right route. But at least then you know why, and you have used the waiting time productively.

Your connection is not too small. You are simply using it at the wrong moments.

When is your grid connection genuinely full?

Three quite different situations all get described as “the connection is full”, and each calls for a different answer.

  • The first: you hit your contracted capacity at peak moments. If your trucks come back between seven and nine in the morning and all plug in at once, your peak briefly touches the contract ceiling. For the other twenty-two hours of the day you sit well below it. This is the most common case and also the easiest to solve.
  • The second: your contracted capacity is structurally too low for your total energy demand. Across the full day you use more kilowatt hours than your connection can deliver. Control alone will not fix that.

  • The third: the grid in your region is full, regardless of what you want. You cannot get extra capacity because the network operator does not have it. The capacity map from Netbeheer Nederland shows whether your postcode area is in the red.

Before you decide anything, you need to know which of the three applies. That calls for quarter-hourly data over at least a year, not your annual invoice. Many companies discover during that analysis that a handful of assets accounts for nearly all their peaks.

Why an upgrade is rarely the fastest route

In congestion areas, applying for a heavier connection takes several years, and that is the lead time after allocation. Add the cost of the physical work, plus a higher standing charge on your transport tariff for the rest of the contract term. So you pay permanently for capacity you only need during those two morning hours.

What makes it more awkward: the business case for your electrification stands still while you wait. Trucks that do not run deliver no fuel savings. Rooftop solar you cannot use because export is not permitted delivers nothing.

That does not mean you should withdraw the application. Keep it as a long-term option and make sure you are not dependent on it.

What is still free inside your existing connection

An average distribution centre has more headroom than the peak graph suggests. It sits in the simultaneity.

  • Charging sessions: a truck that arrives at 18:00 and has to leave at 05:00 has eleven hours for a three-hour session. That is ten hours of shifting room per vehicle.
  • Refrigeration: cold stores have thermal mass. Pre-cooling for an hour when power is cheap and the grid has room means an hour less demand during the peak.
  • Rooftop solar: generation that coincides with consumption never travels through your connection. Every kilowatt peak you use directly is capacity you do not ask of the grid.
  • Battery storage: a buffer that charges off-peak and discharges during the morning peak lowers your measured peak without changing anything in your process.
  • Offices and building services: HVAC, heat pumps and workshop equipment are individually small, but they add up at exactly the wrong moment.

Each of those five can be controlled separately. The difficulty is that they need to move together, every five minutes, based on energy prices, weather forecasts, trip planning and the current state of your battery. No team can keep up with that by hand.

Four routes to free up capacity

Smart control within your current contract

An energy management system continuously distributes available capacity across your assets and keeps you below your contract ceiling. This is the route with the shortest lead time and no hardware investment. With smart charging for a large fleet, the point is not slower charging but charging at the right moment.

Adding battery storage

A battery raises your on-site peak capacity without touching your grid connection. Payback depends on your peak profile and on whether you can also deploy the battery on the energy markets. Without control that combines both, you leave half the value on the table.

Revisiting your contract type

A time-bound transport agreement or a flexible contract gives you extra capacity or a lower tariff in return for limited availability during peak hours. That requires you to demonstrate you can curtail, and therefore that your control is in order.

Sharing capacity with your neighbours

If you sit on a park with businesses that have a different consumption profile, a group transport agreement (GTO) or an energy hub on your business park is a realistic route. An office peaks in the afternoon, you peak in the morning. Together you fit inside less capacity than you would separately.

Most sites end up with a combination. Control first, because it makes the other three routes cheaper and easier to substantiate.

If you do not own the building

At a distribution centre, the bill and the investment often sit with different parties. The tenant pays the energy bill and has the charging problem. The owner holds the connection, the roof and the switchboard.

That makes the conversation harder, not impossible. Two things help. First, a simulation on real data from last year, so both parties look at the same figures rather than at assumptions. Second, being clear about what capacity is worth. A building where a tenant can actually electrify lets better and for longer than one where that is impossible.

Montea takes this on across its portfolio. In the Montea case, six sites with solar, battery systems and energy-intensive distribution centres run under one control system, with a rollout to further sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. For a property owner, the gain is not only the energy bill but also a portfolio ready for tenants who are about to electrify.

What this looks like in practice

At Lidl in Almere, seventeen electric trucks, six 350 kW DC fast chargers, 5.9 MWp of solar and two megawatt hours of battery storage come together on one site. Grid capacity is limited and export is not permitted.

The EMS aligns charging times with the trip planning system and optimises the use of solar, battery and grid capacity in real time. She recalculates a control schedule for the next 48 hours every five minutes, based on energy prices, weather forecasts and current charging demand. No fixed rules to reconfigure every time the trip schedule changes. Read the Lidl Almere case for the full set-up.

Room to grow, without the waiting list

Start with insight. Map your quarter-hourly data and establish which assets cause your peaks. Then work out which loads you can shift without affecting operations, and which investment pays back fastest given your profile. Only then do you know whether you genuinely need a heavier connection.

Tibo EMS starts with a digital copy of your site, in which we run the control plan against your own data from last year. You sign off on figures, not promises. Want to know how much room sits inside your connection?

Frequently asked questions

At logistics depots, 20 to 40 per cent more usable capacity is common. How much it is in your case depends on your peak profile and how many flexible assets you have. A simulation on your own quarter-hourly data gives an indicative estimate before you buy anything.

No, charging sessions shift within the time window your operation allows. You specify which trucks need to be full and when, and the system plans inside that. At Lidl in Almere, that link with the trip planning system is the very basis of the set-up.

Yes. Controlling charge points, refrigeration and building services already delivers results without storage. A battery widens your room for manoeuvre and opens extra revenue models, but it is not a precondition for starting.

No. Keep the application open as a long-term option, but do not make your plans dependent on it. Once you can grow within your current connection, the upgrade becomes an improvement rather than a blocker.

Yes, provided you agree arrangements with the owner about the switchboard and the assets. A simulation on real data helps to base that conversation on figures rather than assumptions.

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