December 16, 2025: New regulations are needed in Germany to ensure soaring applications for new BESS projects can be processed efficiently to boost national energy security, say utility industry leaders.
The German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) said in analysis made public on November 27 that applications for large-scale BESS facilities currently stand at a total capacity of more than 720GW.
Requested storage capacity exceeds more than two-and-a-half times the country’s current installed capacity of 263GW, including renewable and conventional power plants.
Meanwhile, the current annual peak load of the transmission networks is around 80GW.
BDEW said the proposed 720GW increase in BESS capacity emerged from a survey it conducted among transmission system operators and 17 large distribution system operators, which together operate half of the German electricity grid.
BDEW executive board chair Kerstin Andreae said storage technologies are an indispensable part of a modern energy system, such as in smoothing out load and generation peaks and boosting security of supply.
“But they have to fit into the overall system. In the high and medium-voltage levels, grid capacity has become a scarce commodity in view of the high demand of large consumers such as datacenters, large heat pumps, e-charging infrastructure and industry.”
Andreae said next steps should include rapidly amending power plant grid connection regulations to exempt future BESS facilities with a nominal output of 100MW.
Meanwhile, regulatory procedures should take better account of the current shortages of grid capacities — and capacity allocations should take account of economic criteria.
Last month, Germany’s Federal Network Agency published figures on connection applications and approvals for battery storage facilities for the first time.
The agency, Germany’s main authority for promoting competition in the markets for energy and other sectors, said in 2024 network operators received a total of 9,710 connection applications for battery storage at medium-voltage level and above.
This figure did not include domestic storage facilities. Facilities for which applications were made have a total planned capacity of around 400GW and a storage capacity of around 660GWh.
At present 921 operational battery storage facilities are connected at medium-voltage level and above, with a net rated capacity of around 2.3GW and a storage capacity of around 3.2GWh, the agency said.
