What happens when you apply for a connection?
A new or heavier connection request goes to the regional grid operator responsible for that area, or to TenneT for a direct transmission-grid connection. If the area has enough available capacity, the request is granted in the normal course of business. If not, the request is placed on a waiting list rather than refused outright, and it keeps its place there until capacity is freed by grid expansion, by another party leaving the list, or by flexibility measures.
Source: Enexis, "Nieuwe werkwijze voor stroomaanvragen".
What changes once an area is congested?
From 1 July 2026, in congested Enexis zones, the automatic capacity reservation that small connections used to receive ended: households, small business and large business now enter one shared waiting list. Position on that list is set by the ACM priority framework, which ranks requests by societal category (such as healthcare, safety, housing, or grid-relief value) rather than only by application date or connection size.
This is the point where "am I on a list" stops being the useful question. The real question is which priority category a request falls into, and how full that category already is ahead of it.
Source: Enexis, "Nieuwe werkwijze voor stroomaanvragen".
How is a request's position actually decided?
The ACM set a revised, better-substantiated national priority framework so that congestion easers and requests with major societal importance can be connected with priority; that revised framework took effect on 31 December 2025. Grid operators have since clarified and harmonised how the waiting-list process itself works, including publishing more information for applicants online, and TenneT specifically cleaned up its own waiting list as part of that work.
Source: Derde Voortgangsrapportage LAN, April 2026, page 41.
Can flexibility move a request up the list faster than waiting for new grid?
Yes, and national policy is explicitly building toward this. New flexible contract types (block-hour contracts, capacity-limiting contracts, group transport agreements) let grid operators offer capacity sooner than a traditional fixed transport right would allow, and grid operators are increasingly offering these flexible options directly to parties already on a waiting list. Where regular congestion management still is not enough, a grid operator can run a flex tender, asking the market for flexible capacity at a specific location as a last resort before considering options like temporary gas-fired generation.
Source: Kamerbrief Voortgang aanpak Netcongestie, 2 April 2026, pages 3 and 4.
Is the queue actually getting shorter?
Not everywhere and not for every direction. Nationally, the regional-grid waiting list for large-user off-take connections stood at just over 15,000 requests at the end of 2025, up about 1,000 in the preceding half year, while TenneT's own high-voltage waiting list fell to 211 applicants over the same period, partly because of the list clean-up. The two lists are moving in different directions at the same time, which is itself the point: a queue only makes sense read layer by layer and region by region, never as one national number.
Source: Kamerbrief Voortgang aanpak Netcongestie, 2 April 2026, page 3.
Decision lens
Before assuming a project is stuck behind a long queue, check three separate things: which layer the constraint sits on (regional or transmission), which priority category the request would fall into under the current framework, and whether a flexible contract type could offer earlier capacity than a traditional fixed transport right. Each of these can change the real answer independently of the other two.
See also: the glossary entries for waiting list, priority framework and flex tender, and the ACM priority framework explainer for how positions within the queue are ranked.
This explainer is evergreen and updated if the underlying queue rules change. To respond or flag an update: [email protected].