Contracted capacity: the limit you can actually move yourself.

With your grid operator you have contracted a transport capacity: the maximum power you may draw at any moment (and, increasingly, feed back). That number determines a hefty share of your fixed grid charges — and it is the limit you are billed on, month after month.

Important to keep sharp: you do not pay for what you use on average, but for the highest peak. One fifteen-minute stretch of everything-on-at-once counts as heavily as a month at full tilt. The reverse also holds: control your peak and you can make do with a lower contracted capacity.

Exceeding it costs more than it seems

Going above your contracted capacity means extra costs — and with structural overruns, conversations with your grid operator that you would rather stay ahead of. On a full grid there is also no room to scale up 'for a moment': the contracted capacity you have is what you have.

That makes peak monitoring not administration but operations. You do not want to find out on the invoice that it went wrong; you want a system that sees the peak coming and intervenes before the limit — by bringing in the battery, slowing down charging or briefly holding back cooling.

Moving the limit without the grid operator

The same contracted capacity often fits far more business than you think. The order that works:

• Measure and forecast your actual peak per quarter hour — most companies do not know their own profile.
• Flatten the peak with control and storage; the room you free up is direct room to grow.
• Only then recalibrate your contract: sometimes the contracted capacity can come down, sometimes you want to use the room for expansion instead.