An upcoming RES auction offering investment support to standalone batteries representing a total capacity of 175 MW comes as the next step in the energy ministry’s effort promoting batteries at RES projects, and, by extension, increased usage of storage units in the country’s electrical system.

The ministry is striving to stage this auction, whose investment support stems from the European Commission’s REPowerEU program, as early as May.

A preceding auction had offered RES projects energy-storage investment support of 200,000 euros per MW, but this level has now been halved to 100,000 euros per PW, the intention being to make the support package available to more RES units.

A sum of 85 million euros has been marked out for energy-storage system support from the country’s REPowerEU allocation, worth a total of 795 million euros. The REPowerEU package has come to bolster Brussels’ preceding RRF initiative.

The upcoming RES auction will concern batteries with two-hour durations. It will be followed by an auction offering investment support for batteries with four-hour durations, planned to be installed at former lignite-dependent areas.

To date, two auctions have been staged for investment support to standalone batteries representing a total capacity of roughly 700 MW.

Besides these two auctions and the forthcoming auction, possibly in May, a further two auctions offering investment support to standalone batteries with a capacity of between 700 and 800 MW are planned to be held by the end of this year, bringing the support effort’s overall tally to approximately 1,675 MW.