In brief
- The state pays 75% of the home battery, but no more than 15,000 lei including VAT. The programme is open only to individuals who are already prosumers, meaning they have photovoltaic panels connected to the grid and a prosumer contract in their own name. The storage system must have at least 10 kWh, must use lithium or sodium rather than lead, and must withstand at least 5,000 charge and discharge cycles.
- The two ceilings work against each other on small systems. The 75% rate covers the full 15,000 lei only on a project worth 20,000 lei. But the maximum eligible cost standard is 1,500 lei for every kWh installed, so a 10 kWh system, the smallest one allowed, has at most 15,000 lei of eligible expenditure and receives at most 11,250 lei. To reach the 15,000 lei ceiling you need a battery of at least 13.34 kWh.
- What counts is not who applies first, but who puts up more of their own money. Applications are ranked on a score of up to 100 points, half for battery capacity and half for the applicant’s own contribution. The maximum score requires a battery above 20 kWh and an own contribution of at least 25,000 lei, that is a project of 40,000 lei, in which public funding drops to 37.5%. The order enters into force on 14 September 2026, and the date on which the application window opens will be set separately, by decision of the President of the Environment Fund Administration.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 775 of 14 September 2026
In force from: 14 September 2026, the date of publication
The Ministry of the Environment, Waters and Forests has issued the order approving the guide under which the Environment Fund Administration will pay up to 15,000 lei including VAT for a storage battery fitted to a house that already has solar panels. This is the second storage scheme opened in the same week, after the 650 million euros for panels and batteries at town halls, schools and hospitals, published three days earlier, on 11 September 2026. The difference in treatment between the two is considerable: public institutions receive 100% of eligible expenditure, while an individual prosumer pays at least a quarter of the project value out of pocket.
The order has two articles and one annex. Article 1 approves the financing guide, Article 2 orders its publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. The guide itself, with 35 articles and four annexes, fills the remaining 16 pages of issue no. 775. It was signed by Minister Diana-Anda Buzoianu in Bucharest on 11 September 2026, on the basis of approval report no. 60.836 of 8 September 2026 drawn up by the Environment Fund Administration.
The eligible applicant is defined in a single sentence in Article 5(1): a natural person holding prosumer status. Companies, owners’ associations and town halls cannot apply, and the consumption point cannot be used for economic or professional activity unless that activity has a separate meter. The battery must serve only the consumption point for which the applicant is a prosumer, and if the photovoltaic installation has no hybrid inverter, one may be fitted at the latest when the storage system is commissioned, but at the beneficiary’s expense: the cost of the inverter is declared ineligible in Article 6(2).
The money never reaches the household directly. The Environment Fund Administration does not sign a contract with the individual beneficiary, but with the installer, who fits the system, issues an invoice showing the state’s share separately, and then claims reimbursement. The installer must be a business with NACE code 4321, electrical installation work, must hold an ANRE type B licence held for at least 12 months, and must undertake not to subcontract the installation work. The list of validated installers is published on the Environment Fund Administration website, and the beneficiary picks one of them through the institution’s online application.
The programme is multiannual and runs nationwide, financed from the Environment Fund revenue generated by auctioning greenhouse gas emission allowances. The guide sets neither a total budget nor an opening date. Application sessions and the sums allocated to each are approved by decision of the President of the Environment Fund Administration and published on the institution’s website.
What it changes in practice
The order enters into force on 14 September 2026, the date of its publication in the Official Gazette of Romania. It is an act issued by the head of a central specialised body of the public administration, and the three-day rule does not apply to such acts: under Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000, they enter into force on the date of publication unless they themselves set a later date. Article 2 of the order sets none.
The first practical effect is that nobody can apply yet. The guide is in force, but applications open only after the President of the Environment Fund Administration approves the first session and after the list of validated installers is published. Article 8(1)(h) of the guide allows applicants to register in parallel with the validation of installers, so the two timetables need not follow one another.
The second effect is that battery size becomes a financial decision rather than a technical one. The score is built from two criteria worth 50 points each. Capacity brings 2.5 points for every kWh, so the 10 kWh minimum is worth 25 points, while anything from 20 kWh upwards earns the full 50. The remaining points come from the applicant’s own contribution, through a formula that multiplies by 30 the ratio between the beneficiary’s money and the state’s money. On a 20,000 lei project, where the state pays the maximum of 15,000, the ratio is one third and brings 10 points. The full 50 points are reached only when the beneficiary’s own money climbs to 25,000 lei, meaning a project worth 40,000 lei.
The third effect hits anyone who buys cheaply. Article 26(10) provides that, if the value of the own contribution or the capacity of the system shown in the supporting documents is lower than the figures declared at registration and leads to a lower score, the Environment Fund Administration does not reimburse the project expenditure. It does not cut the funding proportionally and does not recalculate: it pays nothing. Since the own contribution score is a continuous function, any price reduction obtained after registration lowers the score, except for applicants who were already at the 50-point ceiling.
The fourth effect concerns deadlines. The beneficiary has 90 days from publication of the list of approved applicants to choose an installer, failing which they are deemed to have given up the funding. Installation and commissioning must be completed within 12 months of that same date, a term that rises to 18 months only if the investment is finished and an updated grid connection certificate has already been requested, and the extension must be requested by the installer, not by the beneficiary. Payment to the installer is made within 60 days of the reimbursement claim.
The fifth effect stretches well beyond the installation work. Monitoring runs for one year from the issue of the updated grid connection certificate. During that period the beneficiary must keep the system running, allow site visits, refrain from altering the installation or the building in ways that affect the investment, and refrain from transferring the building to a legal entity or to any entity carrying out economic activity, mortgages excepted. The documents uploaded at registration must be kept until monitoring ends.
The battery enters another calculation as well. The ANRE methodology applicable from 25 September 2026 counts the energy drawn out of storage in the same way as the energy produced, when an energy community asks for a reduction in the distribution tariff.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Until this order, the state funded individual prosumers only for panels, through the programme approved by Order of the Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forests no. 1.063/2023, known to the public as Casa Verde Fotovoltaice. There, the battery was not eligible expenditure. Anyone who wanted storage paid for it in full. The new programme is aimed only at households that have already been through the first stage: the entry condition is not the intention to install panels, but prosumer status already acquired, proven with a prosumer contract and a grid connection certificate.
The reimbursement mechanism has been taken over almost unchanged from the panel programme: a contract with the installer rather than the beneficiary, an invoice showing the state’s share separately, and a reimbursement claim filed by the installer for at least ten systems at a time where more than ten beneficiaries have signed up with them. The guide does, however, add new requirements. The invoice must carry a QR code containing the invoice number and date, the installation address, the beneficiary’s surname, first name and personal identification number, the number and date of the updated grid connection certificate and the capacity of the system. Under the participation contract, the installer is obliged to send the Environment Fund Administration annual data on the energy actually stored by the systems it has fitted.
The selection method has changed too. Under the panel programme, the order was essentially the order of registration. Here there is a scoring grid, and ties are broken first on the value of the own contribution, then on the capacity of the system, and only at the end on the date and time of registration. Whoever registers first but puts in less money loses out to someone who files a more expensive application later.
Compared with the scheme opened on 11 September 2026 for public entities, the difference is not only one of percentage. There, the battery must be sized to cover between 2 and 4 hours of the output of the existing plant, so it can be neither too small nor oversized. Here, the guide asks only for a minimum of 10 kWh and technical compatibility with the photovoltaic installation it serves, with no link at all between battery capacity and panel output. A household with 3 kW of panels and one with 10 kW fall under the same rules and may claim the same capacity.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The beneficiary does not have to advance the state’s share. The installer invoices the difference, and the public money is paid straight into the installer’s treasury account, so the prosumer pays only their own contribution.
- The technical requirements are written as verifiable thresholds rather than elastic wording: at least 10 kWh, at least 5,000 cycles, a warranty of at least 5 years, and a battery management system that monitors temperature, voltage and maximum charge and discharge currents.
- Lead-acid batteries are expressly excluded, whatever their construction technology, and components must be certified by an accredited body. That is a real barrier against cheap, short-lived systems.
- The application file contains eight documents and is uploaded online, with no trip to a counter. The funding application is filled in by typing and is valid without a signature.
- An application can be withdrawn and filed again until the session closes, without losing the right to take part.
- A beneficiary may move to a different validated installer at most twice during the first 90 days, plus once more afterwards. If the chosen installer does not take them on within 5 days, they can immediately pick another.
- If the online application stops working, every deadline that depends on it is extended by the same period, and sessions can be suspended until the fault is fixed.
What remains a problem
- The 15,000 lei ceiling cannot be reached with a system at the lower limit. At a cost standard of 1,500 lei per kWh, a 10 kWh system has at most 15,000 lei of eligible expenditure, and 75% of that is 11,250 lei.
- Above a project value of 20,000 lei, the real rate falls below 75%: at 30,000 lei it reaches 50%, and at 40,000 lei, the value that brings the maximum score, 37.5%.
- The scoring rewards spending, not efficiency. Someone who can find 25,000 lei of their own money ranks ahead of someone who sizes the battery correctly for their own consumption.
- The hybrid inverter, compulsory where the installation does not already have one, is ineligible but still counts towards the total project value. Its cost is added to the own contribution and therefore raises the score, without the state paying a single leu towards it.
- A price cut obtained after registration can wipe out the entire funding, not just part of it, if it lowers the score below the one awarded.
- Neither the programme budget nor the opening date of the session is in the guide. Both are set later, by decision of the President of the Environment Fund Administration.
- The guide sets short deadlines for the applicant, 5 days for clarifications, but no deadline within which the institution must settle the appeals filed in the 30 days following publication of the lists.
- If the applicant dies before the funding is approved, the rights do not pass to the heirs and the application is lost.
Practical advice
- Check first whether you are a prosumer on paper, not just in fact. You need a prosumer contract in your own name and a grid connection certificate for the consumption point where the battery will be fitted. Without them the application cannot pass, however many panels sit on the roof.
- Work out the ceiling before asking for quotes. Multiply the capacity you want, in kWh, by 1,500 lei: that is all that will be accepted as eligible expenditure. Take 75% of the result and compare it with 15,000 lei. Below 13.34 kWh the ceiling is out of reach, whatever the system costs.
- Decide deliberately whether to enter the scoring contest. A 10 kWh system with the minimum own contribution gathers 35 points out of 100. If the session has a small budget and many applicants, such a file stays outside the funding, and the guide says expressly that projects left out for lack of budget are not carried over into the next session and cannot be appealed on that ground.
- Declare figures you can stand behind. At reimbursement, your own money and the capacity may be equal to or higher than the declared values without changing the score, but if they come out lower and the score drops, nothing is reimbursed. Round the capacity down and the contribution down, not the other way round.
- Ask the supplier for the technical data sheet before you sign anything. You need it in black and white: capacity of at least 10 kWh, lithium-ion, LiFePO4, sodium-ion or an equivalent lead-free technology, at least 5,000 cycles, a warranty of at least 5 years, and a battery management system. Certification is carried out by a body accredited under SR EN/ISO 17065.
- Gather the tax clearance certificates early, from the state and from the town hall, plus an electricity bill no more than 6 months old. If you are carrying out the project at an address other than your home address, you also need a tax certificate from the town hall of that locality.
- Upload electronic documents in the original format in which you received them. A scan or a photograph of a document issued electronically will be rejected, and the application does not let you replace what you have already uploaded.
- Put the 90 days for choosing an installer and the 12 months for installation in your calendar, both counted from publication of the list of approved applicants, not from registration. The extension to 18 months is requested by the installer, not by you, and only if the request reaches the Environment Fund Administration before the 12 months run out.
- Ask for the grid connection certificate to be updated immediately after commissioning. Without it no compliant invoice can be issued, so nothing can be reimbursed, and the monitoring year starts from the date it is issued.
- Do not sell or transfer the property to a company while you are still under monitoring. Transfer to a legal entity or to an entity carrying out economic activity is forbidden, mortgages excepted, and failure to meet the obligations means paying the money back.
Frequently asked questions
When can I file an application?
How much money do I actually get?
What is the 1,500 lei per kWh cost standard?
Do I need to have photovoltaic panels already?
Does the state pay for the hybrid inverter?
How is the score calculated?
What happens if two applications score the same?
What happens if the system turns out cheaper than I declared?
Which batteries are accepted?
Can I file more than one application?
Who installs the battery?
What obligations do I have after installation?
Can I appeal against a rejection?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article 19(4)(a) of the guide: the same sentence points to two different calculation bases for half the score. The text announces that the own contribution is scored „raportat la valoarea totală a proiectului” (in relation to the total value of the project), while the formula printed immediately after it divides the own contribution by the funding granted by the Environment Fund Administration, not by the total value. The difference is not theoretical: for the same application, on a project worth 20,000 lei with 15,000 lei of funding and 5,000 lei of own contribution, the formula gives 10 points, while measuring against the total value gives 7.5. Worse, the ceiling set immediately afterwards, „pentru o valoare mai mare de 50 se acordă punctajul maxim de 50 de puncte” (a value above 50 earns the maximum score of 50 points), becomes unreachable on the second reading: the ratio between the own contribution and the total value is always below one, so multiplying it by 30 cannot exceed 30 points, and the maximum of 100 points provided in paragraph (3) of the same article could never be obtained. Annex no. 3, the funding application form, deepens the inconsistency: point 1 of section C asks for „procentul contribuției proprii” (the percentage of the own contribution), a figure that makes sense only in relation to the total value, while Article 19(1) says the applicant declares „valoarea contribuției proprii” (the value of the own contribution). The criterion decides the selection order, and therefore who gets funding and who does not.
- Article 24(4) of the guide and point 2.2 of the participation contract in Annex no. 2: the reimbursement period starts on two different dates, 90 days apart. The guide says the period for reimbursing eligible expenditure is 24 months and „se calculează de la data expirării termenului de 90 de zile prevăzut la art. 22 alin. (1) pentru selectarea instalatorului validat” (runs from the expiry of the 90-day term laid down in Article 22(1) for selecting the validated installer). The model contract, which is an annex to the same guide and is signed by the installer, says the same 24-month period runs „de la data publicării pe pagina de internet a AFM a listei solicitanților aprobați” (from the date on which AFM publishes the list of approved applicants on its website), that is from the moment when the 90 days start running. Once the period expires, both texts provide that no further reimbursement claims may be filed and that expenditure not reimbursed in time can no longer be financed. An installer who follows the contract loses three months of reimbursement compared with one who follows the guide. Article 14(6) allows the Environment Fund Administration to amend the model contract before signature, but that does not correct the published text; it merely moves the solution outside the act.
- Article 28(6) of the guide: the cross-reference admitting certain installers points nowhere. The text provides that the programme is open to „instalatorii și reprezentanții legali ai acestora aflați sub incidența dispozițiilor art. 28 alin. (4) și ale art. 30 alin. (6)” (installers and their legal representatives falling under the provisions of Article 28(4) and Article 30(6)) of the guide to the photovoltaic panel programme approved by Order of the Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forests no. 1.063/2023, as subsequently amended and supplemented. In the version of that guide currently in force, Article 30 has four paragraphs, so paragraph (6) does not exist, and Article 28(4) provides something other than a prohibition: „AFM nu poate fi trasă la răspundere pentru nerespectarea de către beneficiar/instalator a termenelor și condițiilor stipulate în prezentul ghid.” (AFM cannot be held liable where the beneficiary or installer fails to observe the deadlines and conditions laid down in this guide.) Nobody can fall under a provision of that kind in the sense of an exclusion worth lifting. Since the entire content of the rule consists of a cross-reference, the published text does not allow anyone to establish which category of installers is being admitted and, consequently, whether a given installer benefits from it.
Editorial analysis
The programme solves a real problem and solves it in time. After several years of panel programmes, Romania has tens of thousands of household prosumers who produce a great deal at exactly midday, when they consume little, and consume a great deal in the evening, when they produce nothing. A battery fixes both ends of the problem: the household uses in the evening what it produced at noon, and the low-voltage grid takes a smaller injection peak. The technical requirements were written by someone who knows what is on the market: excluding lead-acid batteries, the 5,000-cycle threshold, the compulsory battery management system and certification by an accredited body rule out precisely the class of cheap products that would have turned the programme into waste. The weak part is not the design, but the arithmetic.
The first thing you do not see reading the guide from beginning to end is that the programme’s three financial figures, 75%, 15,000 lei and 1,500 lei per kWh, do not line up with one another. The 75% rate covers the 15,000 lei ceiling only on a project worth exactly 20,000 lei. But the cost standard caps eligible expenditure at 1,500 lei for each kWh installed, and the smallest capacity allowed is 10 kWh. So a system at the lower limit has at most 15,000 lei of eligible expenditure and receives at most 11,250 lei, which is 3,750 lei less than the advertised ceiling. Reaching the 15,000 lei requires at least 13.34 kWh, a capacity that appears nowhere in the guide and that nobody will find in a catalogue, because batteries are sold in steps of 5 kWh. In practice, the ceiling in the headline is reached only from 15 kWh upwards.
The second point emerges when Article 19 is read together with Article 7. The own contribution score is calculated on the ratio between the beneficiary’s money and the state’s money, and the state’s funding is frozen at 15,000 lei. The only variable left that can raise the score is therefore private spending. Reaching the full 50 points takes a contribution of 25,000 lei, meaning a project worth 40,000 lei, in which the state’s real share falls to 37.5%. A perfect score is thus obtained by putting up 25,000 lei of your own money in order to collect 15,000 from the state. Anyone who sizes the battery correctly for their own consumption, at 10 kWh and with the minimum contribution, gathers 35 points out of 100 and starts out in the bottom half of the ranking. The grid does not select the most efficient projects, it selects the households with the most spare cash. And because the hybrid inverter, the only compulsory expense declared ineligible, still counts towards the total project value and therefore towards the own contribution, anyone forced to buy one also picks up extra points for it without meaning to.
The third point comes from comparing this with the scheme opened for public institutions three days earlier. There, the ministry required the battery to cover between 2 and 4 hours of the output of the existing plant, precisely so that unusable capacity would not be bought. Here, the only link required between the battery and the photovoltaic installation is „compatibilitatea din punct de vedere tehnic” (technical compatibility). Combined with the scoring grid, the absence of an upper limit creates a clear incentive: a household with 3 kW of panels, which at the height of summer cannot generate more than a few kWh of surplus a day, has every reason to declare a system above 20 kWh, because that is where the points are. In such cases public money would pay for capacity that will never be fully charged. All the more so since the programme’s performance indicator, defined in Article 2(4) as R = f x ∑Ci, does not measure the energy actually stored but the installed capacity multiplied by an emission factor. The figures do not add up here either: f is given in kilograms of CO2 per kWh and C in kWh, so the product comes out in kilograms, while R is defined in tonnes. Taken literally, a 10 kWh system cuts 1.7972 kilograms of CO2, and ten thousand such systems, which would cost 150 million lei, cut 17.97 tonnes. Installers are bound by contract not to undermine this indicator and to report the stored energy every year, but the energy they report does not enter the formula.
Finally, the guide hands out time unevenly. The beneficiary gets 5 days for clarifications, on pain of rejection, the installer likewise gets 5 days for documents and 10 days to sign the contract, and during monitoring replies are due within 15 days. The Administration takes 60 days to pay and sets itself no deadline for settling appeals, even though it gives 30 days for filing them, in Articles 13 and 21. There is no deadline for assessing applications either, nor for publishing the lists. The beneficiary’s only firm point in time, the 90 days for choosing an installer, runs from the publication of a list whose date cannot be predicted. And Article 8(2), which allows „anumitor etape” (certain stages) to be dropped from a session, is written without any limit: read strictly, the stages listed in paragraph (1) include the examination of appeals.
What should be changed
- Align the 15,000 lei ceiling with the cost standard, either by raising the standard or by expressly lowering the ceiling for small systems. Effect: a prosumer installing the minimum 10 kWh learns from the guide that they will receive 11,250 lei, instead of discovering at reimbursement that the figure in the programme headline does not apply to them.
- Rewrite Article 19(4)(a) with a single calculation basis, the same in the text, in the formula and in the funding application in Annex no. 3. Effect: two identical applications receive the same score whoever assesses them, and the 50-point ceiling and the 100-point total become reachable on both readings, not just on one.
- Tie the funded capacity to the installed output of the photovoltaic system it serves, following the 2 to 4 hour band used in the programme for public entities. Effect: public money no longer pays for capacity that cannot be charged, and the scoring stops rewarding oversizing.
- Unify the date from which the reimbursement period runs, in Article 24(4) and in point 2.2 of the participation contract. Effect: the installer learns from the act, rather than from negotiation with the funder, how long they have to file reimbursement claims, and the 90-day gap between the two texts no longer decides whether an application gets paid.
- Introduce a deadline for settling appeals, in Articles 13 and 21, and a deadline for assessing applications. Effect: a rejected applicant knows how long they must wait before turning to the administrative court, and the 90 days for choosing an installer no longer start from a date that cannot be anticipated.
- Expressly limit the stages that may be dropped under Article 8(2), excluding those concerning appeals. Effect: the right of appeal, recognised in Articles 13 and 21, no longer depends on the content of an administrative decision organising the session.
- Correct the performance indicator in Article 2(4), by bringing the units of measurement into line and by measuring the energy actually stored, which installers report every year anyway. Effect: the programme can show how many tonnes of carbon dioxide it really avoided, rather than a number derived from installed capacity, and the data collected from installers starts to serve a purpose.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 775 of 14 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 128 KB
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.