From Product Evidence to Access Rights: Auditing and Routing Non-Firm Grid Connections

Abstract

Non-firm connection products can accelerate grid access while reinforcements are delayed, but their planning value depends on evidence supporting the contractual promise. We develop a one-way evidence-to-access framework for calendarized products. Stage A constructs and fixes directional restriction calendars from public residual-load and day-ahead price-timing signals. Stage B audits the submitted calendar and one bounded common repair, tests joint threshold attainability under the shared annual budget, and applies an aggregation-aware Power Transfer Distribution Factor (PTDF) certificate. Stage C treats the resulting ledger as fixed in queue-aware allocation and intervention planning. In the primary policy-package evaluation, the evidence-supported menu returns the same $2.119$~GW allocation as firm-only access, whereas authorizing the uniformly derated fallback raises awards to $6.442$~GW and reduces backlog from $136.076$ to $113.601$~GW-years; all $4.489$~GW of non-firm awards use the fallback. In a target-free matched control, evidence-routed and state-blind fallback menus attain primary objectives equivalent within EUR~1 and return the same accepted applicants, award years, routes, and intervention portfolio. Thus, in the reported testbed, fallback authorization rather than calendar-specific evidence support drives the access-volume effect.