The PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) market in Central and Southeastern Europe has been losing momentum in the past year, while other support schemes for renewables are “not so attractive as they used to be or are even not present,” said Krasimir Zhivachki, Senior Power Market Analyst at Enery, at the conference “RES market towards maturity”, organized by Energynomics. In his view, the only viable strategy is to combine renewable assets with complementary solutions in order to secure revenues and long-term price stability for investors and financiers.
Countries with strong hydroelectric capacity, such as Norway and Switzerland, continue to display limited price spreads thanks to their reservoir-based storage. By contrast, in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Hungary, spreads are three to four times higher. The average in Romania reached about 170 euros in 2024 and remains similar in 2025. Zhivachki emphasized that such signals clearly show the market needs storage and that this need has been visible since 2023.
Yet, most grid connection rights in the region are still granted to new PV, wind, and gas-fired projects, with only around 10% allocated to battery storage. He warned that this imbalance risks pushing Romania down the same path as Greece and Bulgaria, where curtailments are mounting. Greece is set to curtail around 2 TWh of renewables in 2025, while Bulgaria will lose about 0.5 TWh — equivalent to 7–8% of its total consumption.
“If Romania doesn’t want to go into the same situation, both the development of solar projects, wind projects and battery projects need to go hand in hand,” he said.
From a commercial perspective, Zhivachki pointed out that traders can earn only 5–10% extra revenue by optimizing renewable assets across intraday and balancing markets. By contrast, batteries can participate across all markets, from speculative intraday trades to capacity and flexibility services, greatly expanding their revenue stack.
In some countries, he added, as much as 90% of battery revenues now come from ancillary and capacity services, a very different composition from what financial models had originally assumed. While Romania is not there yet, the combination of wide day-ahead spreads and a maturing intraday market makes batteries increasingly attractive.
“When you couple batteries and renewables as a trader, then you can offer much more interesting products and hedges,” Zhivachki concluded.
The conference “RES market towards maturity” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners: Elektra Renewable Support, APERS, Baringa, CJR Renewables, Enery, Eximprod, Gotion, Huawei, Nordestina, Nova Power & Gas, Prime Batteries Technology, Sermatec, Sunotec, Voltika, Wiren.