Europe will struggle to accelerate grid delivery if utilities and manufacturers continue planning in isolation. Network operators need far more equipment than the supply chain has ever been asked to deliver, but manufacturers will only build capacity if they can trust the demand they are shown. As the industry looks ahead to CWIEME Berlin 2027, Andreas Jahn of Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) explains why manufacturers need predictability and security as well as visibility and why not every grid constraint needs a hardware answer. 

Consider a Berlin network operator that planned to replace around two substations a year across a stock of roughly 80. That is a replacement cycle of around 40 years and it gave manufacturers a steady rhythm to plan capacity around. 

That rhythm is breaking down. Annual grid investment in Germany is expected to need to rise from €15 billion in 2023 to around €34 billion in the coming years, and average lead times for cables and large power transformers have almost doubled since 2021. Network operators need many more assets. For manufacturers, the difficult part is knowing how long that demand will last. 

Two investment clocks 

The problem is a mismatch of investment cycles. Network operators work with assets that can be paid off over several decades, while manufacturers must recover investment in capacity over a much shorter period. Expand for a peak that proves temporary and the result is idle plant and stranded investment. 

Visibility is only the first step 

Long-term visibility matters, but it is not enough. Knowing a peak is coming does not make it safe to invest if the demand could fall away afterwards. Manufacturers also need predictability and security, through contractual certainty or another way of sharing the risk of investing ahead of demand.  

EuropaCable members have more than €4 billion of investment underway and expect to more than double production and installation capacity by 2030, but say further investment depends on predictable pipelines and stronger commitments from TSOs and member states. 

The same applies to published plans. Network operators already share what they expect to build. The question is how certain those plans are. A manufacturer needs confidence that a project listed for five years’ time will still exist and will proceed as expected. More information does not necessarily mean more reliable information, and this is a market-wide issue rather than one that affects manufacturers alone. 

German battery storage shows how raw demand numbers can be misleading. Grid operators received requests to connect 573.5 GW of battery storage in 2025 but issued commitments for just 54.2 GW and since April 2026 the TSOs have prioritised large projects by maturity rather than queue position. Those figures show why manufacturers cannot rely on connection requests alone when assessing future demand. 

Early orders, standards and a fragmented market 

Orders placed early are delivered early. Place one at short notice and you join the back of an existing production queue, and bespoke requirements can push it further back. Standardisation can help by lowering costs and making manufacturing more predictable, but it also raises questions about whether standards should be national, European or global. The answer raises questions of supply chain resilience, security and where critical equipment comes from. 

Longer-term procurement helps too. Buyers are increasingly turning to long-term framework agreements, which give manufacturers the visibility to expand capacity. 

Market structure matters as well. Germany has more than 860 distribution system operators, while Great Britain has 14 licence areas held by six groups. For a manufacturer, hundreds of buyers with their own plans and specifications make the overall demand picture hard to read. 

Europe is starting to respond. The EU’s Grid Action Plan asked ENTSO-E and the DSO Entity to work with technology providers on common specifications and clearer visibility of project pipelines and the Commission’s December 2025 Grids Package came with guidance on anticipatory grid investment. 

Do we always need more copper? 

Better coordination would help the supply chain see where assets are needed now and where they can wait. But the core problem is not that capacity is badly distributed between network operators. There is simply not enough of it overall. 

That is why alternatives to new hardware deserve a place in the conversation. Where copper-based infrastructure is expensive or cannot be delivered quickly, battery storage can help bridge the gap, particularly where congestion occurs only for a limited number of hours or days. Energy efficiency incentives, time-of-use pricing and battery auctions are other options. 

The scale of the bill makes this unavoidable. The Federal Network Agency estimates that German distribution operators alone must invest around €110 billion by 2033, rising to as much as €207 billion by 2045, however the overall cost can be reduced. The goal is the required outcome at the lowest system cost. That means regulation that looks beyond the capital cost of individual assets and that adapts to new technologies before existing approaches become too expensive or risky, rather than after. 

Manufacturers will still be essential because flexibility assets also need to be built. What changes is the signal they need. Instead of simply seeing a bigger order book for substations, they need a credible picture of the full mix of solutions that grids will use. 

From visibility to commitment 

Better signals mean reliable plans and orders placed early enough to make a difference. They also mean standards that make products easier to manufacture and regulation that rewards the best outcome for the system, rather than simply relying on familiar approaches. Visibility is where the conversation starts. Commitment is where capacity gets built. 

This is why events like CWIEME Berlin and the Grid Delivery Summit are so important. They bridge the gap between the manufacturers who build grid equipment and the companies that operate our networks, creating a place where plans, specifications and delivery timelines can be discussed face to face. Better signals start with better conversations, and those conversations are far more likely to turn into commitments when everyone is in the same room. 

CWIEME Berlin 2027 takes place from April 27 to 29, 2027 at Messe Berlin, with the Grid Delivery Summit running alongside on April 27 and 28.