Romania's Ministry of Energy announced it cleared the disbursement of grants under the Resilience Facility in the total amount of nearly EUR 36 million for five power storage projects with a combined capacity of over 790MWh.

Among the recipients, there are investment vehicles of "a Dutch billionaire and an Austrian real estate developer," according to Profit.ro.

Minister of energy Sebastian Burduja stated that, through these contracts, Romania will already reach 20% of its storage needs.

"It is essential to ensure that, in the future, the energy system can cope with demand during peak hours, ensuring the stability of the national energy system and allowing us to benefit from the green energy produced by solar and wind farms even when the sun is not shining or not the wind is blowing. The more MW we add in green, therefore intermittent, energy production capacities, the greater the need for storage. All these investments will be seen in the coming years in lower bills for Romanians and for the companies in our country," said the minister of energy, Sebastian Burduja.

In total, 118 power storage projects were submitted, and 38 were already approved, subject to being included in the Resilience Facility's budget. The scheme for funding power storage facilities has a budget of EUR 103 million.

For 13 projects, pre-contracting notices have already been sent. These 13 projects have a total value of the requested state aid of EUR 74 million and have a total installed capacity of approx. 1,575 MWh.

The five projects cleared for funding on November 4 are those developed by Aukera Project Company Delta SRL(299.75MWh(, Baboia Solar Plant SRL (121.92MWh), HQ Plus SRL (79.24MWh).,  Energy Capital Group SRL (199.13MWh), and HQ Curat (91.44MWh).

Last month, the first two similar contracts for power storage were signed, the beneficiaries being power utility company Electrica (70 MWh, with state aid of EUR 3.4 million) and Renovatio Trading (almost 61MWh, with state aid of over EUR 3 million).

iulian@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/George Calin)