Grid connection, easement, building rights: how to tell whether a direct investment has truly secured its site

These topics rarely come first in sales material. The financial model, the tax effect and the revenue forecast get chapters; the site gets a line. In reality the order is reversed: however carefully built, a profitability model is worthless if the asset can lose its place, may not be built, or cannot feed its power into the grid. The good news is that unlike power price forecasts, these three questions are not matters of belief. There is a document for each of them, and if you know what to ask for, you can check them in an hour.

What secures the land under a solar park for 20 years?

The contractual basis is almost always a long-term lease or use agreement with the landowner, typically covering the planned operating life of the asset plus extension options. A solar park, and even more so a battery storage facility, does not usually stand on its own land but on leased ground; buying the plot would be more expensive and is not necessary for operations. The agreement governs the rent and its adjustment mechanism, the scope of use including cable routes and access ways, decommissioning obligations at the end of the term, and the extension options. Two points deserve particular attention when reading: whether the term including options fully covers the planned operating period, also for continued operation beyond the end of the support scheme (A solar park after 20 years: continued operation, repowering or decommissioning? shows why that matters economically), and whether the agreement sits with the business you hold a stake in rather than with some other company of the provider.

Ancillary areas are easily overlooked. A park needs more than the field the modules stand on: the cable route to the connection point, access for construction and maintenance, and possibly land for the transformer and metering stations. If the cable route crosses third-party plots, every single one of them needs its own security. A project can hang on a single right of way that was never properly agreed. So do not ask only for the lease over the main area; ask for the complete list of affected plots and how each of them is secured.

Why is the lease agreement alone not enough?

Because a lease binds only the person who signed it, not the land. Legally it is a contractual right: it obliges the owner who entered into it. But what if the land changes hands, through a sale, inheritance or a forced auction? For those cases there is security in rem: a restricted personal easement under §1090 BGB, registered in section II of the land register. It encumbers the plot itself with the right to build and operate an energy asset there, and it therefore binds every future owner. The lease sets the commercial terms, the easement secures the existence; professional projects always have both.

The easement has a second function that is rarely explained: it keeps ownership of the asset cleanly separate from ownership of the land. Whatever is built in exercise of a right over third-party land is a so-called Scheinbestandteil under §95 BGB and precisely does not become part of the plot; modules, inverters and storage containers remain movable fixed assets of your business. Why that matters for insurance and financing is explained in Insuring a solar park or battery storage asset: which policies belong to a direct investment, and who holds them; what becomes of the lease and the easement in the various insolvency scenarios is worked through, scenario by scenario, in Provider or operator insolvency: what happens to your direct investment.

What does priority in the land register mean, and why does it decide?

Priority determines which right wins in a conflict, and the conflict that matters is the forced auction. A land-register folio can carry many encumbrances: the project's easement in section II, and next to it the mortgages of the owner's banks in section III. Within the same section, priority follows the order of registration; between sections it follows the registration date (§879 BGB). As long as everyone performs, none of this matters. But if the land goes into forced auction, say because the owner stops servicing loans, only the rights covered by the so-called minimum bid survive; everything ranking behind is extinguished with the award (§52, §91 ZVG). An easement ranking behind large mortgages can therefore disappear at exactly the moment it is needed, and with it the asset's security of tenure.

Practice knows two remedies. Either the easement is registered at a priority position with no value-consuming mortgages ahead of it. Or the senior mortgage holders, usually the owner's bank, declare a subordination behind the easement (the change of priority is governed by §880 BGB); alternatively they issue a so-called non-interference undertaking, promising not to enforce against the asset out of their senior position. All of this can be checked against two documents: a current land-register excerpt showing the easement's entry and the section III encumbrances, and, where needed, the subordination or non-interference declarations. Sales material that speaks only of a "site secured in the land register" has not yet answered the real question; what counts is what ranks ahead of the easement.

When may a solar park be built in the first place?

For most ground-mounted plants, building rights are created by a municipal development plan. Land outside built-up areas counts as outdoor area under German planning law, and projects there are only permissible if they are either privileged by statute (§35 BauGB) or the municipality creates building rights, typically through a project-specific development plan. That route takes time: a resolution to start the procedure, public participation and consultation of public bodies, weighing of interests, adoption of the plan. For you as an investor this means the planning status is a question of clearly defined stages, and a project "in discussions with the municipality" stands on a much earlier stage than one with a legally effective development plan and an issued building permit.

One practically important exception is the corridor along major transport routes: solar plants alongside motorways and mainline railways are privileged in the outdoor area up to a distance of 200 metres (§35 Abs. 1 Nr. 8b BauGB). No development plan is needed there, but the permitting procedure remains. Privilege only means that planning law does not stand in the way of the project as such; the building permit under the state building code, site servicing and the remaining public interests still have to be resolved. In the end the data room should contain both: evidence of the planning-law basis (development plan or the specific privilege relied on) and the building permit itself, whose scope covers the asset actually being built.

What applies to battery storage under building law?

Since late 2025, battery storage has been privileged in the outdoor area under certain conditions; before that, its permissibility was a contested question answered differently from state to state and authority to authority. The new §35 Abs. 1 Nr. 11 BauGB privileges battery storage facilities that stand in a spatial and functional connection with an existing renewable energy plant, for instance the battery next to the existing solar park. Nr. 12 opens a second route for storage without that connection, but with tight conditions: at most 200 metres from the boundary of a substation or of a power plant of at least 50 megawatts, at least 4 megawatts of rated power, and a per-municipality cap of 0.5 percent of the municipal area, at most 50,000 square metres.

For project review this boils down to one question with three possible answers: what does the storage facility base its building rights on? A development plan, the privilege under Nr. 11 or Nr. 12, or, so far, nothing that holds? The close look is worth it especially for existing projects being extended by a battery: a building permit that covers only the PV plant does not automatically extend to a storage container planned later. Whether the battery next to the PV plant is also the better structure economically is a separate question, covered in Co-located vs. stand-alone: which gives the better risk structure.

How does the grid connection of a solar park or battery come about?

The connection starts with a connection request to the grid operator and ends with the connection agreement; the decisive review sits in between. The developer submits location, capacity and technical parameters; the grid operator checks whether its network can absorb the additional feed-in at the intended connection point (the grid compatibility study). For renewable plants the operator is legally obliged to connect them without delay and with priority at the point that is technically and economically most favourable (§8 EEG); once the required information is in, it must provide the applicant with, among other things, the result of the study, a timetable and a cost estimate within eight weeks (§8 Abs. 6 EEG). For battery storage that also charges from the grid, the duty to connect follows from §17 Abs. 1 EnWG, which names electricity storage facilities explicitly and requires reasonable, non-discriminatory and transparent terms.

After the commitment comes the technology: plants on the medium and high voltage grid must meet the connection rules of VDE-AR-N 4110 and 4120 respectively and prove it through a plant certificate from an accredited body before they may feed in permanently. That is the job of the developer and the technical operations manager, but it is a useful status indicator for you: a project that can talk about certification and a commissioning date is measurably further along than one still waiting for the result of the grid compatibility study. The competition for available connection capacity does not come from other energy projects alone: data centres, too, register their demand largely in the same distribution grids (Data centres and AI: what the new electricity demand means for solar and storage investors).

What is a grid connection commitment worth, and what must it cover?

A connection commitment is worth exactly what it contains, which makes it worth reading closely. The term itself is not a statutory category but market practice: it refers to the grid operator's written confirmation that the plant can be connected with a certain capacity at a certain connection point, often combined with a reservation of that capacity for a limited period. Four points decide how much it can bear: the committed capacity (does it fully cover the planned plant size?), the connection point (does it match the calculation of the cable route and connection costs?), the time limit (how long does the reservation run, and does that fit the construction schedule?) and the direction of flow.

The last point is the most common stumbling block in projects with storage. A commitment for the feed-in of a PV plant is not automatically a commitment for a battery at the same connection point, because a battery does not only feed in, it also withdraws, and the grid operator assesses the withdrawal capacity separately. If a project is marketed as "PV plus storage", the data room should therefore contain evidence that the commitment covers both modes of operation with their respective capacities, not just the modules' feed-in. The same care applies to extensions: whoever wants to add a battery to an existing commitment later starts a new review procedure at the grid operator, with an open outcome.

What does the grid connection cost, and who bears it?

Connection costs come in two blocks, and both belong in the project's profitability model. The first is the direct cost of building the connection: the cable route from the park to the connection point, the metering and transfer station, the measurement systems. The second is the Baukostenzuschuss, a standardised contribution to upstream network costs that grid operators charge according to their price sheet. For battery storage this has been settled at the highest judicial level since 2025: the Federal Court of Justice ruled that grid operators may charge grid-connected storage a construction cost contribution under the capacity-price model, because storage uses the network through its withdrawals like any other connected customer (BGH, decision of 15.07.2025, EnVR 1/24). Anyone presenting you a storage calculation without a Baukostenzuschuss should be able to explain why.

For your review this means: connection costs should appear as separate line items in the investment total, based on the grid operator's cost estimate rather than a flat assumption, and with a clear statement of who bears the overrun if the final bill comes in higher. How to tell hidden from transparent cost positions in general is covered in Transparent costs: which fees a direct investment involves, and which ones are hidden.

Which documents belong in the data room before you sign?

For each of the three legal positions there are documents that show whether it holds. This list is the core of the site review:

• Lease or use agreement: the term including options covers the planned operating period, the counterparty is the business you hold a stake in, and ancillary areas (cable route, access, stations) are included.
• Current land-register excerpt: the easement is registered in section II, and it is visible which mortgages in section III rank ahead of it.
• Subordination or non-interference declarations from senior mortgage holders, unless the easement already sits at a priority position that holds.
• Planning-law basis: a legally effective development plan or the specific privilege under §35 BauGB relied on, plus the building permit, whose scope covers the actual asset including any storage.
• Grid connection commitment from the grid operator: capacity, connection point, time limit and, for storage, withdrawal are expressly covered; plus the connection agreement once it exists.
• The grid operator's cost estimate for the connection and the Baukostenzuschuss, found again as its own line item in the investment calculation.

In fairness: not every project can produce everything at every stage, and "requested" or "committed" is a legitimate interim status for early documents. Two things are decisive: that the provider states the status of each document precisely instead of papering over gaps, and that the evidence is in place before you sign. A serious provider does not react to this list defensively but with a folder; how to recognise serious providers more generally is summarised in How to tell a trustworthy provider of energy direct investments, and where this review sits in the overall subscription process is shown in From first enquiry to closing: how a direct investment works step by step.

What do even the best papers not secure?

The revenue. Security of tenure, building rights and grid connection are conditions of existence, not return guarantees. Even a fully secured project remains exposed to market risks: fluctuating power prices, curtailment during grid congestion, technical outages, and the entrepreneurial risks that Risks in BESS direct investments, and how they are structurally addressed goes through one by one. And time can pass between a connection commitment and the finished connection if the grid operator first has to expand its network; a credible timetable therefore belongs with the commitment. The site review does not sort the good projects from the very good ones; it sorts the ones that hold from the ones standing on assumptions. That is exactly why it is a review block of its own for us: before we present a project to investors, we go through the plot list, the land-register excerpts, the planning status and the grid documents, and we state what is in place and what is outstanding. If you have a specific offer on the table, we will gladly go through the documents with you in a no-obligation initial consultation. We do not give return promises in the process.