Romania: Funds for battery storage projects, major solar+storage site comes online, progress on 1 GW pumped storage site
Romania aims to exponentially grow its energy storage fleet over the next couple of years, as it works on its plan to deliver 36% of the nation’s energy to come from renewables by 2030, with 8.3 GW of solar and 7.6 GW of wind, and phase out coal by 2032.
Earlier this year, Minister of Energy Sebastian Burduja said the country should have have at least 2.5 GW of energy storage installed by the end of next year and more than 5 GW only a year later.
Last week, Burduja signed financing contracts to support the development of two utility-scale battery energy storage projects. In addition, he signed a contract for the construction of a PV module factory with a planned yearly output of 140 MW, which is part of the government’s plan to build PV production capacity of at least 200 MW/year.
All three financing contracts are leveraging the funds from Romania’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). In terms of storage, the government’s aim is to back the addition of at least 240 MW/ 480 MWh of battery energy storage systems to the grid, with the first two signed contracts amounting to more than 130 MWh.
Romanian utility Societatea Energetica Electrica received EUR 3.4 million in state aid for a 69.9 MWh battery storage project, with the funding envisaged to cover also the construction of transformers and accompanying infrastructure. The grant will cover around 20% of the project’s total eligible value.
This is the second project through which Electrica has accessed funds through the NRRP, after obtaining financing for the 27 MWp Satu-Mare 2 photovoltaic project in October 2023.
Under the second deal, Renovatio Trading, part of renewable infrastructure asset owner and developer Renovatio Group, received a EUR 3 million grant for a 60.1 MWh battery energy storage system. Both projects are located in Transylvania.
“This summer, we all saw how important and necessary investments in electricity storage capacities are. In addition to the role of balancing the system, storage capabilities allow us to benefit from the cheap and green energy produced by solar and wind farms even when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing,” Burduja said at the signing ceremony.
This week, Vienna-based Enery has commissioned a major solar and storage site in northwestern Romania. The project consists of a 51.4 MW PV plant and and a battery energy storage facility of 22 MWh.
The project is backed by a virtual power purchase agreement with Asahi Europe & International (AEI) on behalf of Ursus Breweries, helping the company achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. Sunotec and Huawei were partners on this project. UniCredit Bank Romania provided a EUR 39.3 million loan to the EUR 52.5 million investment.
“We continue to reap the fruits of the work from the last working day of last year, when, together with the ministry team, we stayed until 4 in the morning to reach a milestone in the NRRP and sign the financing contracts for new electricity production facilities. In total, there were 300 contracts signed for 1,800 MW of new green energy. Projects that included storage capacities were prioritized,” Burduja said at the opening of the Sărmășag PV Power Plant.
According to the minister, he facilitated the allocation of EUR 13 million in grants since assuming office 15 months ago. This funding will enable 1.8 GW of projects via the NRRP, 4 GW of residential and commercial and industrial projects via the Modernisation Fund and 730 MW of solar farms. “In the next three to five years, we will see a lot of these investments realized,” he said.
Earlier this month, Burduja reported progress on what he terms as “the most important project for the Romanian energy system” – the 1 GW Tarnița-Lăpuștești pumped storage hydropower plant. Romania resumed the development of the project last year, upping the planned capacity from 500 MW to 1 GW.
The project, which will be the first installation of its kind in the country, has however been slow to get off the ground. As Burduja wrote on Facebook, there was no progress made even after a year of work with state-owned energy company Societatea de Administrare Participațiilor în Energie S.A. (SAPE SA) failing to close the tender for the assignment of the feasibility study.
“These days, we have continued the discussion with strategic partners from Japan and France – the consortium formed by Itochu and EDF, two global energy giants,” Burduja wrote.
He added that the two companies are interested in the project and are willing to carry out the feasibility study with their own money and then complete the design and construction of the project. “A large-scale project needs serious, stable, reliable partners who have proven that they know and can implement large projects. Such as Tarnița-Lăpușteşti is for our country,” Burduja wrote.
Development originally began in 1989, but the project has since gone through a series of setbacks. Hidro Tarnita, the Romanian project company in charge of managing the planned asset, has held a number of failed tenders for the project over the past decade. Finally, the Romanian authorities abandoned the project in 2019 after defining it as financially unviable.