Romania’s battery storage market is gaining momentum, but it’s not yet ready for takeoff. A recent Aurora Energy Research report reveals strong investor interest and promising early projects, but also highlights some regulatory gaps and unclear market access. Like many countries across Europe, Romania stands at a decisive crossroads, poised between potential and performance.
A Market Waking Up to Its Potential
The Romanian battery energy storage systems (BESS) market is entering a critical phase. “The current status is that there are a few operational batteries, but very high interest,” said one of the analysts at Aurora Energy Research. With roughly 100 MW of operational capacity — mostly pilot projects run by a few companies — the market is still nascent. Yet Romania now is one of the most promising battery capacity market in Southeastern Europe, said Filippos Falieros, Advisory Project Leader with Aurora Energy Research.
What sets Romania apart is not infrastructure, but timing. Aurora’s interest in Romania started “about a year ago,” building on its prior flex market analyses in Greece and Hungary. The modeling tool Chronos, originally built for the UK market, was adapted to simulate Romanian market dynamics, including price arbitrage and ancillary services participation. “This model simulates the trading of a storage system… to assess and simulate the projected revenue of their investment,” Panos Kefalas, Research Lead Expert for Southeastern Europe with Aurora Energy Research explained.
Even so, Romania’s BESS ecosystem lacks key structural elements — particularly on the regulatory side. “There is no very clear regulatory framework on how exactly the batteries can give capacity,” the analysts noted. This results in ambiguity over how BESS projects can participate in ancillary services markets and how they might be compensated.
Investment Appetite High, But So Are the Risks
Despite these gaps, investors are showing robust interest. This enthusiasm is driven by high market volatility, imbalance costs, and growing appetite for renewables. As Aurora’s team described it, “Most big developers that have a renewable asset would get interested into the collocated battery systems.” And this is also the case with the banks; projects that are collocated with renewables are considered safer bets, particularly when supported by hybrid portfolios. Hybrid investment portfolios — often structured to include both generation and storage — are primarily used to support the financing of standalone BESS. Colocated projects typically don’t face the same financing barriers, as they inherently combine generation and storage, making them more straightforward from a risk and revenue standpoint.
Aurora highlights two dominant investor attitudes: cautious waiting and early commitment. “We see policy that is supportive… some auctions, talks from the TSO, relevant grants. But there’s not full clarity into which markets you can really participate [in],” they emphasized. Some developers — like Nofar Energy, which is exploring a large-scale storage investment — are betting that the regulatory puzzle will resolve itself before projects go live.
Romania appears to be following a “subsidy-as-road-to-market” approach for now, with grants offering financial cover for early projects. Still, merchant projects are also emerging — a sign of growing confidence that the market will mature and deliver revenue streams from wholesale arbitrage, balancing services, and grid support, all driven by price volatility and system needs.
Regulatory Bottlenecks and Structural Gaps
Several roadblocks hold back full BESS deployment in Romania. The most pressing is market access. Romania has two operational balancing markets — aFRR (automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve) and mFRR (manual Frequency Restoration Reserve) — but the third, FCR (Frequency Containment Reserve), functions only on paper. Flexible generators are required to offer FCR services, but without compensation — hardly a recipe for market enthusiasm, although BESS can react within milliseconds, making them ideal for this ultra-fast, high-frequency service.
Certification is another bottleneck. It can be rather complicated and time consuming to certify your assets for the automated services, as the process is long and complex. For example, gas-fired or hybrid units face extended delays in joining balancing markets.
There is also a structural limitation inherent to BESS technology itself. “You cannot promise all the hours of the day,” due to duration limits in two- or four-hour batteries. This makes it difficult for BESS operators to commit to round-the-clock availability for ancillary services without risking penalties.
The good news? Reforms may be coming. “We expect this will change,” Aurora experts said, pointing to efforts by the Romanian TSO to clarify participation rules.
Key Insights from the Aurora Report
One of the core contributions of Aurora’s Romanian BESS report is its ability to test configurations — both collocated and standalone — and simulate how revenue streams evolve under various policy and market scenarios.
Now Is the Right Time to Invest The Romanian battery market is still in its early stages, presenting strong return opportunities for early movers. Profitability is expected to gradually decline beyond 2030 due to price cannibalization in the shallow Balancing Capacity Market. As such, market entry before 2028–2029 is seen as critical for securing competitive advantages.
“The main goal of this report is to give a framework for storage business cases in Romania,” Panos Kefalas explained. The Chronos model analyzes key parameters such as battery duration, commissioning dates (COD), and market revenue shares. “Early mover advantage” is a recurrent theme — first-movers will benefit disproportionately from the balancing market, until saturation leads to “cannibalization.”
Romania Is Moving in an Ambitious Direction Although the NECP (National Energy and Climate Plan) sets a conservative target of 1.2 GW of storage by 2030, momentum is building quickly. A 300 million euros support scheme is already in place for both standalone and co-located BESS projects, and both the TSO and the Ministry of Energy are pushing for more ambitious deployment targets.
Aurora’s models show that revenue structures shift over time: from ancillary services initially to wholesale arbitrage as more batteries enter the market. “You have to really think of several markets to optimize… day-ahead is not enough,” they emphasized.
Co-Located Projects Show Stronger Performance Battery projects co-located with renewables (RES + BESS) tend to outperform standalone systems under various price scenarios. They benefit from more efficient energy market participation, synergies in CAPEX and OPEX, and generally face fewer challenges in securing project financing.
What makes Aurora’s model valuable is not necessary the static IRR prediction for a particular use case, but the ability to adapt to a fluid market context. “At any given moment, it allows you to take the best possible decision.”
Lessons from More Mature Markets
Romania’s cautious steps toward BESS deployment can gain direction and confidence by looking to the more mature energy storage policies adopted in neighboring European states. While each country’s market design reflects national energy priorities and legacy systems, there are clear patterns emerging in how successful markets create viable pathways for battery storage investment.
Poland stands out as a compelling case study for securing predictable revenue streams. Here, the state has implemented capacity market auctions — mechanisms that reward flexibility and availability, not just energy delivered. For battery developers, this approach offers a long-term income floor, which is crucial when negotiating project finance. This is the way the Republic of Moldova seems to embrace.
By contrast, Greece has opted for competitive tenders to accelerate storage deployment. The most recent round awarded 900 MW of storage capacity, combining clear timelines with direct public support. Though these auctions don’t guarantee long-term capacity payments like Poland’s model, they provide upfront CAPEX support and clear eligibility conditions. Meanwhile, Hungary has also used competitive tenders, but its progress has been slowed by higher grid fees and market structure complexities. Still, the transparent auction format remains a useful tool to signal market intent and mobilize private developers.
Romania could benefit from adopting a hybrid approach: enabling merchant projects while simultaneously introducing support mechanisms that de-risk first-mover investments and accelerate grid integration.
Conclusion
Romania’s BESS market is, in many ways, on the brink. The technological interest is there. The economic rationale is strengthening. The policy ambition is materializing. But confidence hinges on clarity — and that means better regulation, transparent market access, and functional supportive mechanisms for investment.
Until then, Romania’s storage story will remain one of potential rather than performance. As one of the Aurora analysts summarized it: “Tons of interest, lots of people want to go into it… but there are still some thorns to navigate.”