A guide for large en­ergy users Across Europe there is a clear and con­sist­ent trend for large scale com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al users of elec­tri­city ad­opt­ing on-site power solu­tions. This is the res­ult of a range of factors, in­clud­ing:re­new­able on-site gen­er­a­tion be­ing one of the most clear-cut ways to help “green” a site’s elec­tri­city sup­ply and help the com­mer­cial/in­dus­tri­al user achieve their cli­mate change tar­gets;on-site power solu­tions hav­ing the abil­ity to provide re­si­li­ence of elec­tri­city sup­ply dur­ing times of sys­tem out­age or con­straint;avoid­ance of the net­work and policy charges typ­ic­ally as­so­ci­ated with elec­tri­city taken from the grid; an­dthe com­mer­cial op­por­tun­it­ies from lever­aging flex­ible on-site power solu­tions to re­duce con­sump­tion from the grid and/or to ex­port elec­tri­city onto the grid.However, while such op­por­tun­it­ies mean that on-site power solu­tions are of­ten an at­tract­ive op­tion, on-site pro­jects will gen­er­ally come with a com­plex ar­ray of leg­al op­tions and con­sid­er­a­tions. These range from:the fun­da­ment­al point that such pro­jects in­her­ently in­volve par­ti­cip­a­tion in a typ­ic­ally heav­ily-reg­u­lated arena (and of­ten the back­drop of a set of reg­u­la­tions rap­idly evolving to keep pace with the sec­tor), toa range of pro­ject/agree­ment struc­tures and parties (without a “cook­ie cut­ter” ap­proach) in­volved in pro­ject own­er­ship, op­er­a­tion and elec­tri­city sale and pur­chase, with sig­ni­fic­ant co-de­pend­ence between such parties, toa gov­ern­ment policy con­text that (while at face value of­ten pro-green) is of­ten in­creas­ingly con­cerned about grid and policy charges be­ing avoided through these types of pro­ject and wishes to see all mar­ket par­ti­cipants pay­ing a per­ceived fair share of such costs. In this guide we provide an over­view of these chal­lenges and op­por­tun­it­ies in Europe, with a view to as­sist­ing you in re­view­ing, up­front, the key is­sues of­ten as­so­ci­ated with on-site power solu­tions of this nature.