The energy ministry is believed to be just weeks away from finalizing a ministerial decision needed to establish a competitive procedure concerning investment and operational support for RES-related standalone batteries.

The energy ministry is expected to announce its required ministerial decision in April, ahead of a first auction planned to take place no later than June.

The ministerial decision will detail the number of auctions to be held and their scheduling, as well as the type of auction to be adopted, among other key matters.

They include the starting price of auctions; prerequisites, including minimum capacity requirements, that will need to be met by RES projects in order to seek investment and operational support for RES-related standalone batteries; as well as the stage of licensing maturity that will be required of auction participants.

As has already become known, auction participants will submit, as their bids, expected annual revenues of projects (in terms of euros per MW of storage capacity). Investors seeking lowest tariffs for their projects will prevail.

An upper capacity limit of 100 MW per project is expected to be set. Also, companies and any of their subsidiaries will be limited to project support not higher than 25 percent of the overall capacity being auctioned.