Connect it, control it, or lose it: Europe's new flexibility rules

Between 16 and 22 October the news that mattered for flexibility came out of ministries and permitting registers. France made remote control a condition of public support for heat pumps and chargers and said industrial metering will have to be flexible too, Poland more than doubled the battery a household may connect behind an existing solar system, and Spain published a quarter in which authorities rejected almost twice as much renewable capacity as entered consultation while storage kept moving to construction. Prices this month will not show any of it, but these rules decide which assets get to earn in 2027 and 2028.

France tied its subsidies to smart control

On 15 October the French government presented the second phase of its electrification plan. Seventeen measures were set out by energy minister Maud Bregeon, funded through energy-saving certificates rather than a budget line, and the flexibility section says plainly that smart control of water heaters, heat pumps and charge points should become the default way those devices run. Support of 500 euros for a controllable home charger starts on 1 January 2027.

The details followed two days later. pv magazine reported on 17 October that from 2027 heat-pump subsidies become conditional on smart-control capability, which the government values at 150 to 200 euros a year per household, and that smart-control functions are to be enabled by default in new charging installations, worth another 70 to 100 euros a year, either by linking the charge point to the Linky meter or through connectivity that schedules charging off-peak. The government puts the potential saving on those controllable uses at up to 35%. It also plans flexibility requirements for industrial energy metering systems, and that single line carries more megawatts than everything else in the residential package.

Two further measures point the same way. The regulator CRE is testing new supply products through EDF Obligation d'Achat, shaped to the daily solar profile, so suppliers have something to build midday-cheap tariffs on. And by the end of 2026 solar-plus-storage projects of up to 25 MW are to be exempted from the current 17 MW connection limit, as long as maximum injection into the grid stays at or below 17 MW. In other words, more equipment behind the same connection, as long as export does not grow, which in practice means room for a battery.

The companies then put numbers against the policy, all for 2030. Gimelec, the French trade body for electrical equipment and automation, aims to mobilise 6 GW of flexibility in commercial and service-sector buildings and to get energy management systems into half of existing facilities. EDF wants remote control of heating, hot water, heat pumps and EV charging in five million customer households. Neoen has committed to 1 GW of flexibility capacity. NW Group plans to invest 1 billion euros to add 1.5 GW to its French flexibility platform and to open that platform to industrial and residential consumers who want revenue from flexible consumption. Octopus Energy France has pledged 1.5 million connected devices, an estimated 5 GW to 6 GW.

If you operate C&I process load, HVAC, EV chargers or a PV-plus-battery site, France is now buying flexible megawatts through pledges and subsidy conditions, and the companies making those pledges will need controllable assets to deliver them.

A good start is a list of what on your site can actually be controlled in software today: which loads can shift, for how long, and who has to sign off. When you order heat pumps, chargers or metering this year, make the control interface part of the specification; every incentive in this package points towards controllable by default, and adding the interface later costs more. Then decide whether to sell that flexibility yourself or through someone who already has market access, and ask how much of the revenue comes back to you.

Fusebox integrates and dispatches BESS, PV, EV chargers, HVAC systems and C&I industrial loads in a single platform, and we operate across 15 European markets and 9 TSOs. If you have load that could move and no route to a market, that is the gap worth closing first.

Talk to Fusebox about putting your loads under automated control →

Poland more than doubled the battery a household may connect

Poland has amended its Renewable Energy Sources Act, and ESS News set out the change on 20 October. From 1 December the rated power of a battery connected alongside a micro-installation no longer counts towards that micro-installation's installed power, provided the battery is no more than 2.2 times the rated power of the PV system. The old rule allowed a 1:1 ratio, above which the battery counted. The limit applies to power in kilowatts, not to capacity in kilowatt-hours, so a 10 kW solar system can now sit alongside a battery of up to 22 kW with no cap on energy. The condition is export control: combined feed-in from the solar system and the battery has to stay below the micro-installation's installed power. The Sejm passed the act on 4 September by 380 votes to 2, and the Senate approved it without amendments on 24 September. On the government's own scenario, if 20% of new net-billing prosumers install batteries up to the new limit, connected storage power reaches about 3.7 GW by the end of 2029.

The money arrived in the same week. A PLN 1 billion scheme from the Ministry of Climate and Environment, financed through the Modernisation Fund, opened for applications on 20 October and runs until 1 October 2027 or until the money is gone. It covers up to 30% of eligible costs, capped at around PLN 800 per kWh, with up to PLN 16,000 for net-billing prosumers and PLN 8,000 for those on net metering, and batteries have to be at least 10 kWh and at least 2 kWh per kWp of solar. Deputy minister Sławomir Ćwik said eligible installations must include an energy management system and backup power capability. Poland went from more than 10,000 home storage systems in the first quarter of 2024 to around 150,000 in June 2026, and the ministry is targeting more than 200,000 by the end of 2027.

For portfolio managers, the household economics matter less than the conditions. Poland now requires an energy management system to get the subsidy, and allows batteries more than twice the size of the solar system behind the meter. Public money is building a fleet of controllable assets in a market where grid-scale connections are scarce. Aggregation is how that fleet reaches a market, and the control layer the subsidy requires is the same one an aggregator needs. Poland just became one of the more likely places for distributed flexibility to grow in central Europe. Our knowledge bot is a quick way to explore the mechanics before you commit to anything.

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Spain is rejecting more capacity than it admits, and storage is what gets through

Spanish permitting data for the third quarter, reported on 21 October from pv magazine España, shows a pipeline being filtered rather than a pipeline growing. Authorities rejected 53 renewable projects totalling 3,367 MW in the quarter, close to twice the 1,762.4 MW that entered public consultation. Expired permits were the single largest reason by capacity, covering 13 projects and 1,410.3 MW, with another 14 projects and 1,085.5 MW falling on unfavourable environmental assessments. Construction authorisations for renewables came to 578.3 MW, down 857.8 MW on the previous quarter.

Storage moved the other way through the same funnel. Nine battery projects totalling 195.5 MW received prior administrative authorisation and 996.3 MW received construction authorisation, of which 985 MW, or 98.9%, were standalone batteries. Andalusia alone accounted for 518.4 MW of that, 52% of the quarterly total. Further back in the queue, 99 storage projects totalling 1,925.3 MW entered public consultation, which is 222.5 MW below the second quarter and 1,516.5 MW below the same quarter of 2025, and 91.1% of it was standalone. Two storage projects totalling 120 MW were rejected.

In Spain, permitting is now deciding what gets built more than price forecasts are. Standalone batteries are getting through, while the solar pipeline behind them is thinning, and much of what was rejected simply ran out of time on its permit. For owners of Iberian assets, a valid permit and a live connection are becoming the scarce part, which makes it more valuable to earn across several markets with what is already built.

Let us look at what your Iberian assets could earn across more markets →

Regulatory and market watch

• Poland: the new connection ratio for home batteries takes effect on 1 December, and the PLN 1 billion storage call runs until 1 October 2027 or until the funds are exhausted.
• France: the exemption letting solar-plus-storage projects reach 25 MW behind a 17 MW injection limit is promised by the end of 2026, with heat-pump support tied to smart control from 2027.
• Belgium: Elia publishes this year's capacity auction results by 31 October at the latest, covering the Y-4, Y-2 and Y-1 rounds bid in September.
• Finland: Fingrid said on 8 September that it will not buy frequency containment reserves from the yearly market for 2027. The yearly-market appendices expire on 31 December 2026 and domestic FCR moves to the hourly market, so reserve providers should check their bidding around the turn of the year.
• Czechia: independent flexibility aggregators have been able to operate since September and a new tariff structure arrives in January 2027, changing the rules for large consumers and storage operators alike, as reported on 5 October.