- The European Commission has approved a €103 million (US$125 million) package of direct grants from the government in Romania for battery storage projects.
- Romania is currently targetting 30.7% renewable generation in its electricity mix by 2030.
The European Commission has approved a €103 million (US$125 million) package of direct grants from the government in Romania for battery storage projects. The government announced financial support through direct grants in November 2022, which will go towards at least 616MWh of battery storage projects.
That is based on a maximum grant/MWh of €167,000. Other thresholds under the scheme are a maximum of €15 million per beneficiary and a maximum of 100% of the project’s funding gap. The programme will receive €79 million from Romania’s portion of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the EU-wide scheme to mitigate the adverse economic effects of the Covid pandemic. At the same time, the government will fund the rest. Finland and Greece also use the funding pot to support energy storage projects.
Romania is currently targetting 30.7% renewable generation in its electricity mix by 2030. The country hasn’t had many utility-scale energy storage projects in recent years, but a booming solar market is set to help battery storage follow on. As covered in the most recent edition of PV Tech Power, our sister site PV Tech’s quarterly journal, solar developers are moving into Romania ahead of a new contract for difference (CfD) scheme.
The first large-scale battery storage system was inaugurated back in 2018 by Portuguese utility EDP’s renewables arm EDP Renováveis while local reports said a 7MW unit started construction in Spring 2022 from Austrian firms Core Value Capital, Gerdan Real Estate and Green Source.