The Ministry of Energy will allocate another 150 million euros for electricity storage batteries, as shown in a call for projects launched in public consultation.
According to a press release from the institution, the general objective pursued by this call is to support investments in the development of electricity storage capacities (batteries) produced from renewable energy sources (solar, wind and hydroelectric energy), capable of operating independently.
The call is carried out in the form of a competitive bidding procedure, with a single criterion for ranking the offers, the value of the requested state aid in euros/MWh, and the period for submitting project proposals for the construction of electricity storage facilities will be announced on the official website of the Ministry of Energy, according to Agerpres.
“We have the same motto as in the first mandate: investments, investments, investments. I will repeat it endlessly: every investment project, every additional MW in the national energy system means Romania’s chance to have lower bills for Romanians and Romanian companies. Moreover, all of this will bring us closer to objective zero: the country’s energy independence, the elimination of imports and the transformation of Romania into a major European producer. It is about the security and well-being of Romanians, but also about the contribution that Romania must make to the European effort to finally get rid of Moscow’s energy blackmail and dependence on Russian energy resources. We have all seen where decades of compromises in this direction have brought us. I said that storage is the zero priority of the Romanian energy system. But we also did the right thing: we signed contracts for storage capacities with financing from the PNRR – 80 million euros, we launched the call from the Modernization Fund for ‘behind the meter’ batteries, for existing solar and wind parks – 150 million euros and now we are preparing to launch another call, for another 150 million euros, also from the Modernization Fund, also non-refundable money, for standalone batteries, that is, for balancing the national system”, declared, in the quoted press release, the Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja.
He added that Romania’s target is to have, in the next two years, a minimum of 1,000 MW of battery storage, “exactly as much as we could have, today, at Tarnița – Lăpuștești, a project that we also took out of the drawer and for which we resumed the entire process, after decades of oblivion”.
Potential beneficiaries of the new Scheme may be: economic operators – micro-enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, but also large enterprises (including newly established enterprises) and autonomous regencies, legally established in accordance with national legislation or in accordance with the specific legislation of the Member State of which they are nationals, and registered with ONRC in Romania until the date of the first payment of the state aid granted under this scheme, whose projects for the construction, on the territory of Romania, of new energy storage capacities from renewable energy sources were selected as winners based on a competitive bidding procedure.
The total budget of the state aid scheme represents the equivalent in lei of the amount of 150 million euros and represents non-refundable amounts from the Modernization Fund.