Central and Eastern Europe BESS ‘fully bankable’ says R.Power, secures $125M

R.Power has secured funding deals for 554 MWh of BESS capacity across two projects, supporting grid-scale deployment in two emerging European energy storage markets.

The developer has signed a project financing facility of approximately PLN 270 million ($74 million) for the construction of its 150 MW/300 MWh Jedwabno BESS in Poland – a deal which the developer claimed is the largest project finance transaction for a Polish utility-scale BESS to date.

R.Power reached the funding agreement following success in Poland’s capacity market auction, where it secured a 17-year contract for the Jedwabno BESS, and the project also has a long-term optimization agreement with Axpo. The Swiss energy trader and R.Power previously announced a multi-year optimization agreement for a 1.2 GWh BESS project to be built in Dzięgielewo, east-central Poland.

Project financing was structured as a club deal between Siemens Financial Services through Siemens Bank and Erste Group Bank AG. Construction at the Jedwabno site is already underway and R.Power expects to complete the project by the end of 2026.

Michał Swół, chief investment officer at R.Power, said that the scale of financing secured for the Jedwabno BESS – underpinned by long-term revenue contracts – shows large-scale BESS is “fully bankable” in central and eastern Europe.

R.Power has also secured EBRD funding for a Romanian BESS project that it owns in partnership with Eiffel Investment Group. The 127 NW/254 MWh project will receive €44 million ($51 million) in financing from the development bank, €29 million of which will be supported by InvestEU first loss guarantee – an EU backed mechanism for absorbing the risk of loan defaults on equity investments

The project is expected to participate in Romania’s developing ancillary and balancing services market, and it has secured an optimization agreement with regional energy trader GEN-I. EBRD said it expects merchant revenues will mainly be generated through the optimization agreement.

Headquartered in Warsaw, R.Power is an independent power producer with 1.4 GW of projects in operation or under construction. The developer reports a pipeline of over 10 GW of utility-scale BESS, hybrid and renewable generation projects with secured grid connections across European markets.