When Natsis Konstantinos, Chief RES Engineering & Construction Officer at PPC, looked five years ahead, he framed Romania not as a marginal renewables opportunity, but as one of the region’s clearest examples of energy transition at scale. “Romanian market is a very good example of how all the European countries in the southeast Europe or in general in Europe should react,” he said. “We are coming back to energy transition [with] more renewables, and flexible generation in order to overcome” the variability of new renewable assets.
For PPC, that outlook is not theoretical. Konstantinos said the company’s Romanian ambitions are already moving from portfolio-building to system-shaping: “If we’re talking about what PPC wants to do here in Romania and how we will see in 2030 this country, from 2 GW by the end of the year we will transform to have capacity more than 5 GW.”
That single statement captured the wider message of the discussion took place during Sungrow Utility Connect Romania, held on 11 May 2026 in Bucharest. Romania’s renewables story is no longer only about individual solar or wind projects. It is about whether the country – and the wider Eastern European region – can create the infrastructure, commercial models and partnerships needed to turn a large pipeline into bankable, connected, operating capacity.
The grid as the regional test
Across the discussion, the grid emerged as both Romania’s greatest constraint and its greatest opportunity.
“Grid is one of the key factors that are affecting the pipeline,” Konstantinos said, pointing to the mismatch between the speed at which developers want to build and the time needed to reinforce electricity infrastructure. Dimitris Galanos, Regional Manager Southeastern Europe at Sungrow, was even more direct when asked what single change would accelerate the transition. “If it would be only one thing, I would say BESS,” he said, referring to battery energy storage systems. His reasoning was tied directly to the grid: “Right now I think it’s the limitation… for the future projects.”
Galanos argued that transmission and distribution operators across Eastern Europe need to accelerate both short-term and long-term planning. “The local TSOs, not only Romania but in general in Eastern Europe, they need to accelerate the short term and long term planning in order to be able to support the projects and optimize the connection process,” he said.
This challenge is not unique to Romania. But Romania’s scale, speed and position in the region place it under the spot. As George Drobot, Managing Director at SUNOTEC, noted, the pipeline has moved faster than the infrastructure. “The reality is that the pipeline of the projects is much bigger than the grid can absorb,” Drobot said. Recent introduced grid-capacity auctions are, in his view, “a step forward” because they can offer investors more predictability, but the next stage must bring clearer timing, clearer responsibilities and clearer consequences when milestones slip.
Interconnection changes the investment logic
The panel’s discussion of interconnection moved the conversation from national deployment to regional market design.
Romania’s transition, the speakers suggested, cannot be understood in isolation. More renewables require more flexibility. More flexibility requires storage, balancing, grid-forming technologies and better interconnection. And better interconnection creates new commercial possibilities across borders, among which “cross regional CFDs or […] regional PPAs”, as Galanos mentioned.
That direction points toward a market in which power does not stop at national borders, and neither do the companies, financiers, engineers or offtakers required to make projects viable. A Romanian renewable asset can become more valuable when linked to regional demand. A storage project can become more bankable when it supports both local grid needs and broader system flexibility. A PPA can become more attractive when it is structured around the realities of an interconnected market.
James Li, VP Europe at Sungrow, placed Romania within a wider European technical architecture. “The European network is very good, [based on] strong interlinked systems…” he said. But he cautioned that the new network system requires time, compliance and coordination. “It takes time… there will be a gap,” he said.
That gap is where execution will matter most.
A glimpse of the new infrastructure
The regional grid will not be strengthened only by new wires. The panel repeatedly returned to storage, grid-forming capability and advanced technology as tools that can help stabilize renewable-heavy systems.
Li argued that as renewable penetration grows, traditional system assumptions change. Still, “the configuration of the system will change based on the traditional generation,” he highlighted. For Sungrow, that makes grid-forming capability part of the next phase of renewable deployment. “We see this going to be the main trend in every renewable new network system: to provide more sustainable inertia, to make sure the traditional utility transition can be safer and more reliable.”
He also pointed to weak points in the network where technology could be deployed strategically. Sungrow, he said, wants to propose in near term new pioneering technology for “inertia support”, for grid stability at the weakest points in the network.
Storage is therefore not just an add-on to solar or wind. It is becoming part of the project’s risk profile, revenue model and grid value.
Todor Marinov, Deputy COO at Enery, explained that customers are already beginning to ask for more sophisticated structures. “More and more offtakers, final energy consumers, industrial [consumers] are searching for such flexible solutions,” he said. Companies that previously signed standard power purchase agreements now want capacity and profile-shaping tools that make renewable supply more usable.
Drobot said lenders are looking closely at whether a project can actually be built on time. “The lenders already started to ask questions regarding who actually builds the project,” he said. “Is the EPC able to fulfill the timeline proposed in the financial close?”
From an EPC perspective, he added, the biggest delivery risk is not necessarily the equipment or the permitting. It is the construction chain. Once an EPC contract is signed, timelines are tight, and the question becomes “who will actually build the project, who will execute the project”, Drobot said. His company’s answer has been to reduce fragmentation through internal capability. “What we tried actually over the years is to have a vertically integrated business, having execution with our own resources, our own engineering department, in order to reduce the risk.”
All speakers agreed that international investors cannot succeed in Romania with capital alone. In a region where capital, technology and demand increasingly cross borders, local presence remains essential. Execution still lands on the ground: engineers, subcontractors, grid studies, permits, foundations, transformers, logistics and people who know how to make things happen locally.
Li commented from the technology-provider perspective with a commitment to be more than an outside supplier. “For Sungrow, we see the direction is positive but definitely the development is complicated,” he said. “We really like using our strong global expertise not to be a distant supplier, [but] to support Romania.”
