Stage 01
Asset
What is actually being bought
Capacity basisDesign life
Strategic Posture Planner · for owners deciding a BESS, solar or hybrid project
In beta
Design the lifecycle.
Place the risk on purpose.
Sign what you agreed.
Before FID, your commercial, technical, legal and finance people decide how this asset earns for twenty years, what protects it, and who pays when something fails. The Strategic Posture Planner is where they decide it together — and it writes the board’s case, the engineer’s brief and the RFQ from what they settled.
Already at the RFQ? Start at Procurement →
Four readings of one asset
IllustrativeFour seats read the same asset correctly, and each pulls it a different way. The shape between them is what the session settles.
How far it pulls one way 1.05 · how far it spreads 1.71
What it is
Twenty years of risk, designed before anyone builds anything.
Your team answers what this asset needs, and the consequences compute as they answer.
Every decision decides who pays when something fails. It stays with you, it goes to a counterparty at a price, or it sits on an interface two parties share — and today most of those decisions arrive by inheritance: a template from the last project, a clause a supplier proposed, a figure typed in before the grid offer came.
The planner puts each one in front of the four people who should be taking it, with what it gains, what it trades and who takes it if they do not. The asset that comes out is the one they meant to build.
In, here, out
What goes in
- The grid connection offer
- Your term sheet, or the lender’s criteria
- Technical due diligence and site studies
- Your own market outlook
- Four people who read this asset differently
What happens here
- Eight stages of decisionsOnly the ones your asset has, each recorded with its date and where the figure came from.
- Every declaration read against the othersConflicts, tensions, and constraints on decisions not yet taken.
- Four checks on the designViable, bankable, insurable, buildable — before anything is bought.
- The position agreed, then frozenThe position is all of those decisions taken together. Priced trade-offs, a dated sign-off, and a record of who overruled what.
What comes out
- Investment briefYour board
- Engineer’s briefYour engineers
- Requirements and RFQThe vendors
- The position itselfThe baseline every later reading is measured against
What you actually decide
Eight stages, and each one depends on the one above it.
Warranty depth cannot be settled before the technical standard it warrants. Cost sits last because it prices what the seven above decided. Your asset is asked only what applies to it.
Two examples from each stage below. The register — the full list GRID asks from — runs to about seventy questions, and you meet the ones your asset has in the session.
Stage 02
Boundary
Who does what, and where each duty ends
Supply boundaryInterface ownership
Stage 03
Site & grid
What the connection actually permits
Connection statusExport regime
Stage 04
Operating intent
How the asset is meant to earn
Revenue stackCycling envelope
Stage 05
Technical standard
How it is built to do that, in numbers
Degradation and augmentationAvailability basis
Stage 06
Delivery
How it arrives, and what proves it did
MilestonesTesting regime
Stage 07
Commercial
What protects it once it is yours
Warranty depthPrecedence
Stage 08
Cost & schedule
What it costs, and when it is paid
Payment milestonesThe case
Before anything is built
Four questions a design has to survive.
Each one is asked of a design that exists only on paper, and answered from your own declarations.
Viable
Does it earn what the plan assumes?
The revenue your case assumes, held against what this bidding zone pays, per duration, from a published benchmark. GRID computes the case — IRR, NPV, payback, DSCR — on the figures you declare. The price they rest on stays yours.
Bankable
Would anyone finance it?
Your lender’s covenants at your own term sheet’s values — DSCR floor, tenor, security package, warranty tenor. Those block. Published development-bank criteria flag instead, because they belong to a different financier.
Insurable
Could the design be covered, and on what terms?
Read against the regulation in force, this site’s own build permit, and the published loss-prevention criteria — each one carrying its standing, so you can see which of them is law here.
Buildable
Can somebody actually deliver it?
Whether the requirements still leave a field of bidders: a sub-50 ms response entails grid-forming inverters, so asking for that alongside grid-following narrows the tender to one supplier, months before anyone notices.
How it runs
Four phases, and the position is what they build.
Your investment manager starts alone; the team joins at the working session. Keep scrolling — the phases run as you go.
The eight stages — what you are actually buying
The investment manager answers one topic at a time, in the order the eight stages depend on each other. Facts the world settles are asked as facts, and carry the document behind them — a connection offer, a term sheet, a permit.
Ask only what appliesA BESS-only asset skips coupling architecture and module warranty, and coverage counts the topics that apply to it.
Separate the given from the askedThe grid connection is a fact you tell the market. Warranty depth is a choice you make. The two are recorded differently, and only one of them is yours to move.
Name what is missingA field with no answer says what it is waiting for, and work carries on around it.
Take the figures the contract is written againstRound-trip efficiency AC to AC at the point of connection, availability as a figure and its basis, cycles, degradation, the opex lines, the case.
At the end of this stage
Every decision this asset needs, settled once — and every one you left open, with the name of whoever takes it instead.
The coherence check — do these declarations describe one project?
Every declaration is read against the others across all eight stages: grid against technical, technical against commercial, commercial against the case. A finding names the two declarations and what kind of disagreement it is.
A conflictTwo declarations that cannot both hold. It names them, and what closing it would take.
A tensionTwo that hold together and work against each other. You may well mean it, so the screen shows it as a deliberate choice rather than a defect.
A noteEverything holds today. Something already declared will constrain a decision still ahead of you.
WithheldThe check could not run, and says which input would let it.
At the end of this stage
Every finding surfaced and priced, and whether to keep a tension stays your call.
The working session — where answers become a position
The stages are answered alone. This is where the other three seats get a say: the position with its arithmetic open, what it presses on, what it exposes, and which declarations would move it if they were read differently.
The sum, with its arithmeticWhere the position sits and why, every figure openable down to the operands behind it. The stages already showed the parts.
What the position exposesWhere risk sits, and therefore what a counterparty would price against if the RFQ let them see it.
Where it is uncertain, which reading moves itA sensitivity naming the declarations the position turns on — so the argument goes where it actually matters.
Then read it once moreThe investment manager’s own summary of what the team agreed, read before the freeze. It stays inside your team.
At the end of this stage
A position your team owns, instead of a set of answers only one person has seen whole.
The freeze — and the three documents that come out of it
The investment manager freezes the record and the dataset stops moving. The investment brief is board-ready at that moment. The engineer’s brief and the RFQ package are finished in tender preparation, the window between the board and the market.
The investment briefFor the board: invest or not, with the risks and the caveats that come with it.
The engineer’s briefBuild this. Cost stays out of it, because an engineer designing against a price optimises the wrong thing.
The requirements and the RFQAsk the market for this. Your reasoning, your ranking and the risks you decided to keep stay out of what a vendor reads.
Rebuilt, not annotatedWhere tender preparation changes something, the documents rebuild on the parts that changed, and the new version is what goes out.
At the end of this stage
Three documents written for three readers, from one set of decisions.
That is the shape of it
Seen enough? Run it on the asset you are working on now.
We run it with a small number of owners on a live pre-FID asset, with us in the room.
Rather talk it through first? Oliver has taken these decisions from the owner’s side.
Automated coherence check
Every document is right on its own. The question is whether they describe the same project.
Every declaration tested against the others, automatically, across all eight stages. The gaps rarely sit inside a document. They sit between them — where the technical standard meets the commercial terms, and where the grid connection meets both.
See how one check reads, and what the four states mean
One rule, three different answers
You declare an augmentation strategy at the technical stage. The check reads it against the site layout. Space reserved for the added blocks, and the check stays clear. Space taken, and two declarations conflict now — while the fix is still cheap, because civil design is still open.
Layout still to be drawn: it is a note, saying that when the layout arrives it will have to reserve the space. Same rule, three answers, each saying a different thing.
4
States
per check
Clear, fired, note, withheld. Each answers a different question, and a clear one means the rule ran and found nothing to say.
2
Kinds
of finding
A conflict is two declarations that cannot both hold. A tension is two that hold and pull against each other — and you may well mean it.
1
Decision
stays yours
Declarations, stages and the freeze all carry on. A finding makes the choice visible; you make it.
Four seats, one instrument
Four honest readings of the same asset. The distance between them is real money.
Commercial, technical, legal and finance each read this asset correctly, from where they sit. Nobody measures the gap between those readings, and it is usually settled by whoever spoke last, or by a template nobody has reopened in three years.
The tension arrives on the screen, while everyone is still in the room
A flag fires the moment one choice pulls against another — computed, so it reaches the table without somebody having to be the one who says it.
The argument is about euros
Every option states its gain and its trade. “We need deeper cover” against “narrow is fine” becomes two priced consequences instead of two opinions.
Every seat keeps its authority
Every calculation is editable and a different reading wins. The position recomputes from it, and the fact that it was overruled is on the record.
Everything open stays visible
“Decide later” becomes a dated item with a name against it. Sign-off is dated and attributed, so six months later the record answers what was agreed.
I have sat in a lot of rooms where four capable people disagree and nobody can say what the disagreement is actually worth. You cannot lead your way out of that. Seventy-odd topics with four or five answers each — nobody holds those combinations in their head, and that is what makes the conversation hard, not the people in it. Put the price and the weights on the table and it stops being an argument and becomes a decision.
Default decider
Leave a decision open and it still gets made. By somebody else.
A blank is an answer with an owner. Every open decision in the register carries the party who takes it instead — and nineteen of the thirty-three that name one go to the party selling to you.
Who decides, if you do not
RegisterSupplier13
Bidder6
Network operator4
Contractor4
Offtaker, market operator, lender, controller vendor, authority — one each5
Nobody1
No decider named3
A decision handed to a supplier is priced against you, but at least it is made.
The one decision that goes unmade
One decision defaults to nobody: who owns each interface — battery to PCS, PCS to transformer, EMS to SCADA, plant controller to TSO. It stays unmade until commissioning, when two suppliers point at each other.
Who ends up paying for each risk
Every declaration places a risk in one of five states: you carry it, you transfer it at a price, it sits on a shared interface, it is mitigated because the asset was built so it costs less when it lands, or it stays open. The placement follows the declaration, and the five are told apart by their words — a transferred risk is one you paid for, so it earns no green tick.
What GRID does with an open decision
It shows you the decider before you leave a decision open, and leaves that choice with you. A default you accept knowingly is a trade-off. The rest are somebody else’s decisions.
Consolidate and hedge
Try the other position before you commit to this one.
Pick a risk and every treatment that applies to it opens at once — each with what it costs, how much risk it takes off, and where it would put the position. Every option at the same weight, in whatever order you rank them.
One risk, every move that exists against it
ExampleAvoidChange the decision that creates it
ReduceEngineer it down at the source
TransferA counterparty holds it, at a price
InsureA premium against a named event
RetainYou hold it, deliberately and on the record
Only the treatments that apply are offered, and risks tracing to one cause are treated once. Every risk opens undecided, so retaining one is a choice somebody makes on the record.
Two numbers, always together
What the move costs, and how much of the risk it removes. Both together, so a treatment that halves an exposure at a price you would refuse reads as exactly that.
Where each option would put you
Each option renders as a ghost position beside the one you hold now. Click and it commits in place: the declaration updates and the position moves.
Whole strategy, alongside one risk
The same view compares moving the entire posture against treating a single risk, so the question “should we be somewhere else altogether” has a place to be asked.
Lock events
Every decision has a point after which changing it costs real money.
Thirty-five of the thirty-six topics carry one. The world does the locking — a grid application really was submitted, equipment really was ordered. GRID records that it happened, so a later change reads as a change against something already committed.
The seven events, and how freezing differs from locking
The seven events, in the order a project meets them
- Grid application submittedTwo decisions are already expensive here — the export regime and what the asset commercially is — before an RFQ exists.
- Grid offer becomes bindingOne decision.
- Layout freezeOne decision — and after it, anything the layout has to make room for is a civil change.
- RFQ issueEleven lock here, and every asked-for decision freezes on the record at the same moment.
- Equipment orderFour decisions, on what has now been bought.
- Contract signatureFourteen — payment milestones, liability caps, currency risk, the testing regime. All asked in the RFQ, all cheap to change until somebody signs.
- Financial closeTwo decisions. And one topic carries no lock event at all, deliberately.
Freezing and locking are different things
The freeze is about the record: GRID does it, at your instruction, when the RFQ is issued. The lock is about the world: it happens on its own, the moment changing your mind starts costing. So a decision can be locked long before it is frozen, or frozen long before it locks. Neither is a defect.
What carrying one open past its lock costs
Every topic carries one sentence on the direction and what drives it. The figure arrives with the bids, so that is where we put it.
The Lifecycle Posture Map
A position has a shape, and your decisions draw it.
Two questions run underneath every decision: when this asset is meant to earn its money, and how much of the risk you keep. Every decision sits somewhere on both, and where they all sit together is what we call your posture.
One asset, sixteen declarations plotted
Example
One declared decision
One computed point per region
The position they add up to
The two axes are independent
Across: whether value comes sooner or the asset stays capable longer. Up: how much of the risk sits with somebody else. Deriving one from the other would flatten the whole plane into a diagonal, and every asset would look like the same trade.
One decision, one dot — and only if you declared it
Sixteen of the register’s topics move a posture. A dot appears when you declare one — and an open decision still tells you who would take it instead.
The arithmetic is yours to check
Each region’s point is the sum of its own dots divided by every dot on the map, so a region holding many deep declarations pulls further out than one holding two shallow ones. Join the four and you have the asset. Plain arithmetic, and you can redo it by hand.
Read as two numbers
How far the shape pulls one way, and how far it spreads across regions. A wide shape is an asset whose decisions pull in different directions — worth knowing before the RFQ goes out.
And afterwards
Drift is only visible when there is something to drift from.
The position you sign is what everything downstream is measured against, for the asset’s whole operating life. With it on record, a concession in year one and a market that moved in year six read as two separate events, each with its own cause, rather than as one unexplained gap.
Declared here. Hardened by Procurement into what a vendor is contracted to. Verified at takeover. Read against reality for twenty years by Resolve.
A term you conceded
Negotiation gives something back. Against a signed position it is a priced change with a date on it, rather than a detail somebody remembers differently later.
A market that re-priced
The case rested on a named external forecast, and the record says which one. When it moves, what moved with it is answerable.
A claim against a promise
Round-trip efficiency and availability were asked for here, promised at bid, and measured in operation. Three references, one figure, and the gaps between them are the argument.
An augmentation, priced against the plan
Year eight asks whether to spend. The answer depends on what the asset was built and warranted to do — which is a declaration somebody made here.
The floor
The discipline underneath all of it.
Quiet work, and the reason the three documents can be trusted against each other.
Provenance
Every figure says where it came from
Measured, sourced from a document, declared by you, derived by a rule you can open, or estimated by us and saying so. A figure one of your own people calculated carries its own grade.
In practice
A given with its document behind it is worth more than the same value declared ahead of the paper — and the board can see which it is reading.
Named absence
A gap says what it is waiting for
Work continues while the record shows what is standing in for what, and what would settle it.
In practice
Several givens can be waiting on one connection study. The record names the study once, and every field waiting on it points there.
Two authors
You can always tell who wrote what
GRID assembles what it can trace. Your investment manager writes what only they can say, and anything ranked is ranked on a weight you set.
In practice
A section your investment manager still has to write says so, and names them as its author. The argument stays theirs to make.
In beta
Run it on the asset you are deciding about now.
A small number of owners, a live pre-FID asset, and us in the room. You leave with the position and the documents; we learn where the questions land.
The eight stages, with your team
Your asset, your declarations, and the arguments they start.
The working session
Where the position gets agreed rather than assumed, and where you can move things to see what happens.
The documents out
The brief for your board, the brief for your engineers, and the requirements your RFQ is built from. All we ask back is your time and the right to be told where it was wrong.
One asset, your own data. It stays yours, it stays inside your workspace, and pricing is agreed with you.
One asset, through the whole thing
Example34
decisions asked, of the 34 that apply
11
declarations read from clauses, across three lenses
7
risks placed, each on the declaration that placed it
3
documents out, from one dataset
“The technical half asked for the strongest asset in the catalogue.” The commercial half handed the market the weakest position to hold it to. Both halves were signed off. Neither reader had seen the other.
The decisions that cost the most were never the ones we argued about. They were the ones nobody in the room realised were decisions — settled by a form somebody filled in months earlier, and priced by the supplier who found them first.
Before you ask
What people want to know first
What does it decide for us?
You do. It puts the decisions in front of the people who should be taking them, in the order they depend on each other, and names who takes each one if you leave it open. Anything ranked is ranked on a weight you set.
We already have a template pack for this.
Most owners do, and it usually holds three documents that started as one and drifted. The difference here is the source: the board’s case, the engineer’s brief and the RFQ all render from the same declarations, so they stay aligned by construction.
How many questions is this, really?
You are asked what applies to your asset — a BESS-only project is asked thirty-four decisions, and coverage counts those. Alongside them sit the facts the world settles: the connection and its parameters, the performance figures the contract is written against, the opex lines and the case. Anything left open is named as open, with who decides it instead.
A finding fired and we disagree with it. Then what?
Then you keep the declaration as it stands. Declarations, stages and the freeze all carry on — a tension is often deliberate. It is surfaced, priced, left with you, and it stays on the record.
What happens if something changes after the freeze?
The board’s case is what it was at the freeze — that is what the freeze is for. Where tender preparation changes something, the engineer’s brief and the RFQ regenerate on what changed, and you get a new document.
Does it replace our engineer?
It works for them. They get a brief with the owner’s elections already decided, so their time goes on engineering rather than on chasing what the owner meant. The requirements are issuable as produced; an engineer may refine them, and until they do, what came out is what goes to market.
Where do the figures come from?
Yours are declared by you and carry whether a document is behind them yet. Ours carry their basis, and anything derived shows its operands. Where a figure is missing, the field says what would settle it. Market forecasts come from a named external source you choose, and your own model enters as modelled.
Can we start before all our documents are in?
Yes, and most owners do. Declare a value ahead of its source and keep working: the record shows it is still waiting for its document, and the board can see the case rests on it. When the paper arrives it replaces the declaration. On a portfolio, a fund states a posture of its own rather than averaging the assets underneath it.
What does the beta cost?
Talk to us. The beta is a working arrangement rather than a licence, and we would rather agree it with you than publish a number we will change.
Start anywhere
Bring the asset you are deciding about now.
Pre-FID, mid-argument, or with a board date already in the calendar — those are all fine places to start.
The module after this one
The position goes to market. Then six vendors answer it.
Procurement reads every offer against the RFQ this module produced, tests every guarantee in it, and prices the risk each bid would leave on your side — against the position you declared here.
What goes to market
Every applicable decision, frozen as it was asked.
The figures the contract is written against, each with its basis.
Only what a vendor prices — your reasoning and the risk you carry stay on your side of the wall.