Dolivo Partners
Large projects succeed once the bottleneck is solved. We solve it: grid connection, planning consent, local approval.
Every large project has a bottleneck: the grid connection, the permit or the lead time for equipment. Since 1 April 2026, Germany's transmission system operators have allocated connection capacity by project maturity, measured on a cut-off date. The projects that come first are those that have secured their land, obtained their permit and ordered their transformers and switchgear by that date. That is where we take a site: grid connection, permit and equipment secured for the same date. The site is then ready to build. Many sites that could get there already exist. Other developers dropped them because they hit a hurdle their standard process had no answer for. The hurdle can still be cleared. We offer ready-to-build sites to investors who want exposure to Germany without building a development team here. Users who need capacity in a particular place by a fixed date want them just as much. Three disciplines work together on this: construction and permitting, energy and the grid, and load control. Data centres are our first focus. Whether we advise, develop or invest, we tell you up front.
Our principle
Full sovereign control over every piece of infrastructure we develop. Who the sovereign is stays open: a state, a municipality, a company or a consortium.
We set up a site's land, energy supply, operation and contracts so that control sits with the owner the project names, and can pass to another owner. Users keep sovereignty over their data. With us, sovereign control and open access go together.
Three partners, three sides of the same problem
The partnership is named after its two founders, Thierfelder and Hagi. A project fails on the contract, the build or the technology. Each of these is the personal responsibility of one of us.
Partner · Construction and permitting
Moritz Thierfelder
Architect, trained in Darmstadt and Glasgow. He worked at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel (Roche Building 1, Actelion Business Center in Allschwil). He then spent more than a decade as managing partner of his own practices in Cologne and Hamburg, most recently full-time at Team Tektura until April 2026. He remains a registered architect.
He is responsible for planning law, permitting and whether a project can be built. In our experience, these are the questions on which most projects get stuck.
Partner · Transactions and energy
Sahand Hagi
More than 15 years originating and closing complex transactions in energy and commodities. Previously Head of Caspian Region at E.ON, where he built up gas sourcing and closed the company's largest long-term gas contract.
He then served as Chief Asset Investments and Development Officer of an infrastructure group in London, and later as Head of Energy DACH at Siemens. Guest lecturer at King's College London. Global Executive MBA, INSEAD.
Partner · Technology and product
Pavan Yerraboina
Founder of Mbytes Labs and co-founder of Laycal and ToLetMe. Previously in product leadership at Oracle, Yahoo, Verizon and AOL, with experience in SaaS, AI models and enterprise cloud delivery. MSc Computer Science, University College Cork. Global Executive MBA, INSEAD.
He is responsible for the software and technology that run a project: automation, data models and the systems that turn a site into an operating business.
Where others stop
Large data-centre operators and developers push dozens of sites forward at once, all on the same template. When a site hits a hurdle the template does not cover, they move on. From their point of view, that is the right call. In July 2025 Google dropped its own planned site in Mittenwalde, citing feasibility and business priorities. In Eisenach, a project that already had a developer and a substation has been on hold since July 2026. The site is still there, and often so is what made it valuable: the land, the proximity to the grid and a municipality that broadly supports the project.
That is where we come in, with sites held up by something solvable: a procedural question, local approval or a rule that works against them. If money can solve a problem, the big players solve it themselves. In the Rhineland lignite region, Microsoft is having new substations and new 110 kV lines built for a combined 520 megawatts. If the solution takes local knowledge, patience and many conversations, we take it on.
The procedure
A site of 20 to 50 megawatts usually connects to the 110 kV distribution grid. It falls outside the transmission operators' maturity procedure. It does, however, sit in its distribution operator's queue, and that operator's own application to the transmission operator falls under the procedure. Nobody publishes how many applicants are waiting in a given grid area. Only the total for Germany is known. The only way to learn the order of the queue is to talk to the grid operator.
Local approval
In Eisenach, on 1 July 2026, the city council voted 19 to 16 for a residents' motion against the development plan, and the mayor withdrew his proposal. In Groß-Gerau, the town council rejected a 174-megawatt project in February 2026, with 14 votes for and 18 against. In both cases the land and the developer were in place. Local approval is a hurdle in its own right, separate from grid, land and financing.
The rule
In the Rhineland lignite region, Amprion's two offshore grid links to Rommerskirchen are not due until 2036 and 2037, bringing four gigawatts between them. Under the current rule, a site there gets its turn late, however good its location otherwise. The remedy is a facility the grid operator can connect earlier. It receives firm capacity for the load that must run at all times, plus curtailable capacity on top. This works only if the grid operator offers a flexible connection agreement (section 17(2b) of the Energy Industry Act, EnWG).
What the municipality gains
A municipality says yes when it gets more than it gives up. The reasons recent projects failed can be named precisely. In Eisenach, the issues were cooling water, noise, and sealing new land where existing sites could have been reused. In Groß-Gerau, the Social Democrats (SPD) cited the climate study's findings on heat islands. They also pointed to the few jobs and to waste heat with no sensible use there. Each of these objections has an answer in the planning, and that answer belongs at the start:
- Reuse first, build new second. We look first at existing industrial and power station sites, with their grid connections and their history.
- Solve cooling and noise in the design. Water demand and noise emissions are quantified in the planning documents the council receives.
- Send waste heat where a heat network can use it. The federal government pays half the cost of a heat-network feasibility study, up to 2 million euros (Federal Funding for Efficient Heat Networks, BEW).
- The trade tax stays local. The operating company is registered in the municipality, as the State of Brandenburg's guidance to local authorities recommends. Were the data centre merely the operating premises of a company based elsewhere, the trade tax, Germany's local business tax, would be split between locations by payroll, and a data centre employs few staff.
- An open process from day one. A residents' meeting, published documents, a named contact, and answers before any vote is due.
We agree these points with the municipality before the council decides. A site the community supports is also worth more to investors.
What a fund rarely has in-house
Capital for data centres in Germany is plentiful. Sites ready to apply by the cut-off date are scarce. Four things decide that, and a fund rarely has them in-house.
Knowing early whether it works
For every site, we check the grid process, municipal approval and the legal position before any capital is committed. If a site depends on something that cannot be solved, we say so early. A site that fails on technical limits or on economics cannot be saved. Spotting that early saves time and money.
Staying power and fixed dates
A fund with a fixed investment period cannot spend three years building relationships with a landowner and a town council. Since 1 April 2026, the cut-off date has set the ranking for connection capacity on the transmission grid. Yet an investment committee rarely commits to a fixed date. We can do both, because we make our own decisions.
Approval, won together with the municipality
Planning consent is created in the town council, through the development plan. The meetings are held in German, and an institutional buyer can reach them only through intermediaries. We talk to everyone, from the mayor to the worried neighbour, and we work their objections into the plans. Moritz Thierfelder has led projects as an architect from permit to completion.
A load that can be controlled
Bundling load, battery storage and generation at one shared grid connection point earns extra points in the maturity procedure. Where a grid operator offers a flexible connection agreement, a controllable site gets more capacity sooner. That takes a system that controls the load. Sahand Hagi and Pavan Yerraboina are developing such a system for dispatch in gas transmission networks. When a case needs other specialists, we bring them in.
Anyone who brings these four things as well is our real competitor. Against them, execution is what counts.
Four roles, openly stated
We cover the whole value chain, from undeveloped land to the leased building. We start with independent advice. Clients can engage us for it today, and every mandate adds to our knowledge and our network. The other three roles come in where a project justifies them.
01
Advisory
Independent, at every phase: site and grid connection, permitting, procurement and construction, tenants and financing, sale. For anyone who builds, buys or sells. We sell neither equipment nor connection capacity, and that keeps us independent.
02
Development
On our own account, we bring together land, grid connection, planning consent and technology, and sell the site as it moves into the next phase.
03
Holding
We end up holding a site when development leads there, because a creditworthy tenant signs a long-term lease. For us it is not a separate line of business.
04
Technology
The software that runs a project, either as a tool within a mandate or as a product in its own right: dispatch, monitoring, data models, automation.
Our role
We advise, develop and invest, sometimes in the same project. We always tell you our role first.
If you want to know more
None of this is required reading. It shows that we study a market closely before we talk about it. We looked at data centres first and battery storage second. We take on other markets only once the evidence is in.
Where grid connections are scarce in Germany
Sites in operation, in planning and with potential, plus site factors, corporate headquarters and the places where local politics has approved or rejected a project. We record the rejections too.
Open the map → The maturity procedureWhy grid connections take so long
Since 1 April 2026, Germany has allocated connection capacity by project maturity, and first come, first served no longer applies. What that costs, what it requires and where it does not apply.
Read the analysis →For clients: our advisory work. For investors: our investment thesis.
What we know, we publish
We publish our findings with a source and an evidence grade for every statement. We share the facts and our reading of them. What we conclude for our own projects stays with us, as it does across the rest of our work.
Where the bottleneck is
A data centre is two facilities in one building: the infrastructure and the IT. Neither is in short supply. The bottleneck lies in grid connections, transformers and permits. Also covered: the six phases of a site, who buys at each phase, and what the hurdles cost in Germany, down to the Energy Efficiency Act and power density per rack.
Read →Transmission or distribution grid?
The maturity procedure applies only to the transmission grid. A data centre of 20 to 50 megawatts usually connects to the 110 kV distribution grid and falls outside it. Yet one level up, it still depends on the procedure. Why the relationship with the distribution operator is then the only lever.
Read →Where battery storage waits for a grid connection
In 2025, developers requested grid connections for 574 gigawatts of battery storage and were offered 54 gigawatts. In the distribution grid, the offers came to four percent of the capacity requested. The same hurdle applies as for a data centre. On top come the 200-metre radius under section 35(1) no. 12 of the Federal Building Code (BauGB), the construction cost contribution and the cut-off for the grid-fee exemption, planned for 1 January 2027.
Read →Talk to us
Tell us about a project, a site or a region. In a first conversation, we work out where the bottleneck is. This often leads to a written assessment of the bottleneck, the permitting position and the timeline.