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    The hows of the warehouse · Part three of five · Shell

    You cannot raise a roof

    The argument

    Power has quietly become the constraint that height used to be. You can design around a low roof; you cannot design around a connection that does not exist, and unlike a roof it is not something money reliably fixes. The Dutch grid is full — roughly fifteen thousand large-consumption users are queued for a new or heavier connection, small-consumption users joined the same list in July 2026, and in some regions the wait runs from one or two years to five or ten. Allocation is no longer first come, first served: a priority framework decides who is connected ahead of whom, and warehousing is not near the front of it.

    Three different things that all look like power Hardware on site, a live contract, and transportable capacity on the network are three separate conditions. All three must hold. Only the first is visible when viewing a site. Hardware on site transformer, cabling, switchgear Visible on a viewing A live contract contracted capacity, in a named party Only visible if you ask Network capacity room on the grid to transport it to you A queue, measured in years + + All three have to hold. Only the first one is visible when you walk the site. A surrendered contract leaves the hardware standing and the capacity gone. The site looks industrial and is not, and nothing you can see from the yard will tell you which of the two you are looking at.
    Three conditions, one appearance. This is why the diligence question is a contract question rather than a site question — and why it belongs in the offer, not the survey.

    The conclusion

    A customer selected a site with a substantial transformer building on it, took the power as settled, and found the energy contract had been cancelled. The steel was still standing and the cabling was still in the ground, and none of it meant anything, because the contracted capacity had gone back into the pool when the previous occupant surrendered it. They were not careless — they did more diligence than most buyers do, and the evidence they saw was real. The inference was wrong, and nothing on that site would have told them so. The only thing that would have caught it is asking to see the contract: what capacity is contracted today, in whose name, and has it lapsed. Make it a condition of purchase or lease, in writing, the same way you would a structural survey.

    What the full paper covers

    • Why physical infrastructure is not capacity: a transformer on site tells you what somebody once had, not what you can get.
    • The three conditions behind a working connection — hardware, a live contract and room on the network — and why only the first is visible on a viewing.
    • Why a warehouse needs more power every year: electric MHE and charging, automation, truck charging, heating and refrigeration, and solar as a connection question.
    • What to do about it: apply early, screen sites on available capacity alongside permitted height, and ask to see the contract rather than the hardware.
    • The workarounds that are becoming normal rather than exotic — peak shaving, battery storage, contract optimisation and shared energy hubs.
    • And, in the full paper: footprint, clear height, column spacing, dock doors both directions, the yard, fire, and what to take to a viewing.

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