The disputes concerned different residential construction projects across the country. The claimants asked in summary proceedings that Liander be ordered to deliver the power connections and offer related transport capacity within a certain period, or forfeit a penalty. 

Network operators such as Liander are struggling with an electricity network that is running into capacity problems. As a result, Liander increasingly has to carry out works on the grid, such as building a new grids and/or expanding the existing grids, before it can deliver the requested connection or transport capacity. Liander put forward that it cannot be held legally bound to deliver the requested connections and transport within a certain period of time while it is in the process of constructing or expanding the grid.

The court followed Liander in its defense and considered that grid construction and grid expansion are tasks within the meaning of Article 16(1)(c) of the Electricity Act 1998 that are not subject to a deadline from which individual applicants can derive rights. ACM supervises grid expansions by grid managers and it was neither stated nor apparent that Liander had underperformed. 
The Court agreed with Liander that as long as no transmission capacity is demonstrably available and works are necessary to be able to provide power on the requested connections, the claimants had no reasonable interest in a claim in summary proceedings to get the connections realised within a certain period of time.

The ECLI numbers of the judgements are: ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2023:6730, ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2023:6636 and ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2023:6637.

Our collegues mentioned below assisted Liander in these proceedings.