In brief
- 650 million euro, two separate lines, the same applicants. The Ministry of Energy has approved the guides for two calls under the Modernisation Fund, open only to public entities: 150 million euro for batteries attached to a renewable power plant that already exists, and 500 million euro for new photovoltaic plants with integrated storage, intended entirely for self-consumption. Both cover 100% of eligible costs, with a maximum of 10 million euro per beneficiary in each call.
- The unit ceilings decide how much can be claimed, not the ambition of the project. On the storage line, the aid cannot exceed 200,000 euro excluding VAT for each MWh installed, and the battery must be sized between 2 and 4 hours at the output of the existing plant. For new solar plants the ceiling rises to 900,000 euro per MW installed, or 1,100,000 euro if the project also includes heat pumps, and the output approved for injection into the grid cannot exceed 400 kW at each generation site.
- Nowhere in the 163 pages does it say when applications are to be filed. The chapter devoted to the submission period refers to a future announcement on energie.gov.ro and afir.info, even though both guides automatically reject applications filed outside it. Selection follows the „first come, first assessed” principle, so the opening day decides who catches the budget, and the investment must be completed and commissioned by 31 December 2029, that is within 1,207 days of publication.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 774 of 11 September 2026
In force from: 11 September 2026, the date of publication
The Ministry of Energy issued on the same day two orders that open to town halls, hospitals, schools and the other public institutions two energy funding lines, worth 650 million euro together. The money comes from the Modernisation Fund, the same source from which the ministry set companies, at the beginning of August, a single completion deadline for renewable energy investments. The two orders were signed on 8 September 2026 and appeared in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 774 of 11 September 2026, on pages 11 and 12, while the guides themselves, the two annexes, take up 163 pages in issue no. 774 bis of the same day.
The Modernisation Fund is the European mechanism set up by Article 10d of Directive 2003/87/EC, the one that created the emissions allowance trading scheme, and it operates under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1.001. In Romania, the implementation framework is set by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 60/2022, approved by Law no. 376/2023. For the two priority investments now at issue, the European Investment Bank sent its confirmation on 6 October 2025, and the European Commission decided on disbursement on 10 December 2025, by Decision C(2025) 8841 final. From the bank’s confirmation to the publication of the guides, 340 days went by.
The first line, approved by order no. 1.065/2026, funds storage alone. The project must install new storage capacity „behind the meter”, that is connected directly to a renewable generation installation that already exists on the site, not to the grid. The estimated budget of the call is the lei equivalent of 150,000,000 euro. Projects that replace existing batteries, those that store energy drawn from the National Power System and those using lead, NiCd or NiMH technologies are excluded.
The second line, approved by order no. 1.066/2026, has a different object and a budget more than three times larger: the lei equivalent of 500,000,000 euro for new photovoltaic plants with integrated storage capacity, intended entirely for the institution’s own consumption. The project may also include heat pumps, provided they cover at least 50% of the building’s annual useful heat demand and have a seasonal coefficient of performance, SCOP, of at least 3.5. On the other hand, projects proposing storage alone, heat pumps alone, extensions of an existing plant or the replacement of an older one are not eligible. Drilling for heat pumps also stays with the beneficiary.
The list of applicants is identical in the two guides and is broad: administrative-territorial units and their subdivisions, units in defence, public order and national security, the prison administration, hospitals financed entirely from public funds, public institutions as defined in Article 2 point 30 of Law no. 500/2002, officially recognised religious denominations and their places of worship, State universities, public-law research and development institutes and stations, inter-community development associations, social centres and palliative care centres financed entirely from public funds, the National Sports Agency, the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee, plus the Romanian Television Corporation and the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, the latter two obliged to show that the investment reduces the cost of the public service and, consequently, the State subsidy. Autonomous administrations and state-owned companies are expressly excluded from the category of public institutions.
In each call, an institution may submit a single project of its own and may be a member of up to three partnerships, and the total aid cannot exceed 10 million euro. The funding covers up to 100% of eligible costs, is granted in lei and is paid through pre-financing, payment claims and reimbursement. Pre-financing cannot exceed 30% of the grant, and a beneficiary may submit at most five payment or reimbursement claims over the whole project, not counting the pre-financing claim.
What it changes in practice
Both orders enter into force on the date of publication, that is on 11 September 2026, because Article 2 of each says so explicitly. They are orders of the head of a central specialist body, and the three-day rule does not apply to them: under Article 12(3) read with Article 11(1) of Law no. 24/2000, they enter into force on the date of publication unless they themselves set a later date.
The first effect is that nobody can submit anything yet. The guides are in force, but the submission session opens separately, through an announcement published on the website of the Ministry of Energy and on that of the Agency for Financing Rural Investments, an announcement which, both texts say, „will contain all the details of how the call is run”. Until then, the platform through which applications are filed does not even have a known address: the guides state that it will be given in the announcement opening the session.
On another guide of the Ministry of Energy the missing piece was the form itself: the claim form for the 362 million euro for cogeneration appeared 785 days after the call had closed.
The second effect concerns the order of arrival. Selection is not made on a score but on the „first come, first assessed” principle, within the limits of the budget. There is no scoring grid, there are no tie-break criteria based on the quality of the project, and there is no reserve for small projects or for communities without consultancy resources. The only filter is eligibility, and if the budget runs out, the remaining files stay outside the funding, however well written they may be.
The third effect is the size of the file. Submission requires, among other things, the feasibility study drawn up in accordance with Government Decision no. 907/2016, with ANRE-certified staff on the team and no more than two years old, the decision of the local or county council committing the institution to the ineligible costs, the document attesting a right of ownership, concession, superficies or administration valid for at least five years after the final payment, the land registry extract showing the property free of encumbrances, the site plan endorsed by the designer, the information and publicity plan and the declaration on the DNSH principle. Lease, loan for use and property leasing are not accepted as title to the land or the building.
The fourth effect concerns the execution timetable. Investments must be completed, commissioned and, on the solar line, connected to the grid by 31 December 2029. From the publication of the guides to that deadline there are 1,207 days, and from those must be subtracted the months that pass until the session opens, plus assessment, contracting, public procurement and the works themselves.
The fifth effect extends beyond the final payment. Ex post monitoring lasts five years from commissioning, during which the beneficiary may not transfer the property to third parties and may not impair the operation of the investment. Transfers between public entities, on reorganisation or merger, are allowed, with prior notice to the funding body and provided the public purpose is preserved. Documents are kept for ten years from the last payment.
Costs become eligible only after the funding application has been submitted, with a single exception: the cost of drawing up the project, which may be incurred beforehand. Consultancy and project management are settled up to a limit of 20,000 euro excluding VAT, and VAT enters the aid only if it is non-deductible and cannot be recovered.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The priority investments had existed on paper since the autumn of 2025, when the European Investment Bank confirmed them, under codes MF 2025-2 RO 0-003 for storage and MF 2025-2 RO 0-002 for solar with storage. The European Commission’s disbursement decision, from the second biannual cycle of 2025, is dated 10 December 2025. Until the rules for claiming the money were published, 275 days went by from the Commission’s decision. The referral notes of the Directorate-General for Investment on which the two orders are based are dated 8 September 2026, that is the day of signature.
Compared with the lines the Modernisation Fund has opened in energy so far, the substantive change is the addressee. Here it is not companies but public entities, and the central condition is no longer the return on the investment but the non-economic character of the activity: the applicant’s economic activities must remain strictly ancillary and below 20% of total annual capacity, both at submission and throughout the implementation and monitoring period. Whoever crosses the threshold loses the aid, which is recovered. Proof is made through a document issued by an auditor, and staying below the threshold requires separate accounting on analytical lines.
Who runs the counter has changed too. The guides were drawn up by the Ministry of Energy „in cooperation with the Agency for Financing Rural Investments”, and applications are filed exclusively online, in that agency’s IT system, which also handles assessment, contracting and payments. The budget form in the annex carries the letterhead of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. For a town hall, this means that European money for panels and batteries is claimed through the same platform used for agricultural funds, not from the Ministry of Energy.
The completion deadline is one year longer than the one given to companies. For investments by economic operators in new renewable generation capacity, the ministry set a single deadline in August, at 31 December 2028. Public entities get 31 December 2029, which implicitly acknowledges that a public institution needs more time: a council decision, a feasibility study, public procurement, works.
Lastly, the storage guide introduces a technical requirement that earlier lines did not state in these terms: storage duration. The battery must cover between 2 and 4 hours at the installed output of the existing plant, with a usable depth of discharge of at least 80%, a round-trip efficiency of at least 85% and a warranty of at least 10 years. Also required are an energy management system and separate metering, showing distinctly the output from the renewable source, the energy charged into and discharged from the battery, the consumption from the grid and, where applicable, the injection.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The funding covers 100% of eligible costs. A town hall does not have to put up co-financing from the local budget for the eligible part, only for the ineligible costs and for whatever exceeds the ceilings.
- The list of beneficiaries is unusually broad. It takes in hospitals, State universities, palliative care centres, places of worship and prisons, not just town halls.
- Pre-financing of up to 30% of the aid can be claimed at any time after the contract is signed, so the institution does not have to advance the whole site from its own budget until the first reimbursement.
- Partnerships are allowed, up to three per applicant, which gives small communes the chance to group together for a project they could not carry alone.
- The technical conditions are written with verifiable thresholds rather than general wording: 80% depth of discharge, 85% efficiency, 10 years’ warranty, 2 to 4 hours of storage, SCOP of at least 3.5 for heat pumps.
- The feasibility study is accepted even without the specialist studies, if these are not available when it is drawn up, and the equipment data sheets are not required at submission but only at procurement and acceptance. The starting file is therefore lighter than it looks.
What remains a problem
- The opening date of the session appears in neither of the two guides, even though both automatically reject applications filed outside the submission period. Preparation is done to an unknown horizon, and the announcement may come at any time.
- The „first come, first assessed” principle favours institutions that already have an up-to-date feasibility study and a consultant under contract. Anyone starting the paperwork only now begins from behind.
- The unit ceilings limit the project more tightly than the 10 million euro does. For batteries, an existing 400 kW plant cannot bring in more than roughly 400,000 euro at the maximum ceiling, however expensive the battery.
- The land or the building must be held in ownership, concession, superficies or administration. Institutions operating in space held under loan for use or lease are ruled out from the start, and the property must be free of encumbrances and of litigation.
- The addressee’s deadlines are short and written in black and white, five working days to answer requests for clarification, on pain of rejection, while the administration’s deadlines are referred to an operational procedure that is not published together with the guide.
- The own contribution does not disappear. Operating costs, commissions, charges, the reserve for price adjustment and the budget margin remain ineligible, and on the solar line even strengthening the roof on which the panels are mounted is not settled.
Practical advice
- First decide which of the two calls you fall under, because they are built to exclude each other. If you already have a renewable plant in operation and want only batteries, go with order no. 1.065/2026. If you have nothing and want panels plus batteries for your own consumption, go with order no. 1.066/2026, which does not accept storage-only projects.
- Work out the ceiling before writing the project, not after. For batteries, multiply the rated capacity in MWh by 200,000 euro and compare the result with the cost estimate. For the solar plant, multiply the installed output in MW by 900,000 euro, or by 1,100,000 if you include heat pumps. Whatever goes above stays with the local budget.
- Check the battery sizing against the formula in the guide, not against the supplier’s offer. On the storage line, the usable energy, that is the rated energy multiplied by the depth of discharge, must be between twice and four times the output of the existing plant. For solar plants, the rated storage capacity must be between 2 and 4 hours of the photovoltaic plant’s output, and the battery’s power must be at least equal to the plant’s output.
- In the solar call, look early at the 400 kW limit on injection into the grid, at each generation site. The file needs a dynamic power management system that automatically and instantly caps the injection at that threshold, and that goes into the feasibility study, it is not added on site.
- Gather the last 12 electricity bills for each declared consumption site. For solar plants, the estimated annual output cannot exceed the reference annual consumption by more than 10%, and any excess is accepted only if justified, for example by heat pumps or other new consumers, proven with documents.
- Ask for the local or county council decision in good time. It must state the name of the project, the total value broken down into eligible and ineligible, the technical and economic indicators and the name of the project manager, and a council meeting cannot be convened in five working days.
- If the institution also carries out economic activity, even ticket sales or letting out space, engage the auditor before submission. His document must show that the economic activity stays below 20% of total annual capacity, and the threshold is also checked afterwards, throughout the implementation and monitoring period.
- Do not contract any works before submitting the application. Only costs incurred after submission are eligible, apart from those of drawing up the project, and an invoice issued earlier stays with your own budget.
- Put the five working days in the diary. During assessment and contracting, at most two requests for further information may be sent, and failing to reply within that period leads straight to rejection of the project, not to a postponement.
- Watch energie.gov.ro and afir.info weekly. The announcement opening the session is the only document that will say from when and until when applications are filed, and under „first come, first assessed” the day you find out matters.
Frequently asked questions
When can I submit the funding application?
What is the difference between the two calls, in two sentences?
My institution already has photovoltaic panels. Which call do I go for?
How much can I get, in concrete terms?
Do I have to put in money from the local budget?
Can I submit a project under each of the two calls?
Which battery technologies are excluded?
Are heat pumps funded in any form?
What happens if I do not finish the investment by 31 December 2029?
What obligations remain after the works are finished?
How is the money actually paid?
Where can I find the full text of the two guides?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- The storage guide, Chapter 8, obligation 2. The only operating obligation in the monitoring period requires the beneficiary „să mențină în funcțiune sistemul de producere a energiei electrice din surse regenerabile solare pentru autoconsum”, that is to keep in operation the system producing electricity from solar renewable sources for self-consumption. The sentence is carried over word for word from the guide approved by order no. 1.066/2026, where the object of the funding really is a solar plant for self-consumption. In the storage guide, however, the object of the funding is the battery, and self-consumption is not an eligibility condition, the text speaking of „autoconsum/optimizare consum”, self-consumption or consumption optimisation. The result is that, for five years of monitoring, the beneficiary has an express obligation to keep in operation equipment the project did not fund, while having no corresponding obligation to keep in operation the storage that was funded. Failure to comply with monitoring obligations triggers recovery of the aid, so what a town hall can be taken to task for at an inspection in year four depends on this wording.
- Both guides, Chapter 1.2, read with the „Attention” box in the same chapter. The section is headed „Period for submitting project proposals”, yet it sets neither a start date nor an end date: it refers to a future announcement by the Ministry of Energy and by the Agency for Financing Rural Investments. Immediately below it, both guides provide that „proiectele depuse în afara perioadei de depunere vor fi respinse automat”, projects submitted outside the submission period will be rejected automatically, and the guide approved by order no. 1.066/2026 adds that the period is „stabilită prin prezentul ghid”, established by this guide, and that „se poate prelungi termenul de depunere”, the submission deadline may be extended. The penalty, automatic rejection, is thus tied to a period the act declares it fixes but does not contain, and the extension concerns a deadline that does not exist. From the published text, the applicant can establish neither when the window opens nor from when any period starts to run.
- Both guides, on the rule that storage must last 2 to 4 hours: the reference plant is named differently from the one the criterion actually uses. In the storage guide, section 1.5 defines indicator ST.1 as „puterea instalată a centralei de producere a energiei electrice din surse regenerabile existentă”, the installed output of the existing renewable electricity plant, and the eligibility criterion in Chapter 2.4(o) likewise speaks of the „centrala de producere existentă”, the existing generation plant. The explanation of the thresholds, in the same section, says however that the 2 hours are the „durata minimă de stocare raportată la puterea instalată eligibilă a centralei fotovoltaice”, the minimum storage duration relative to the eligible installed output of the photovoltaic plant, and repeats the formula for the 4 hours. An institution with a small hydropower or a biomass plant cannot establish from the text whether its project falls under the rule or is excluded, even though the call funds storage attached to any existing renewable generation installation. The guide for solar plants makes the mirror-image error, in Chapter 2.4(q): it requires the storage to be sized „la puterea nominală instalată a centralei de producere existente”, at the rated installed output of the existing generation plant, and in the continuation of the same sentence defines the calculation benchmark as „puterea instalată eligibilă a centralei fotovoltaice propuse prin proiect”, the eligible installed output of the photovoltaic plant proposed in the project. Since this call expressly admits projects on sites where solar capacity already exists, provided metering is separate, the same sentence there points to two different reference outputs. In both cases this is a criterion whose breach leads to rejection of the project.
Editorial analysis
The guides solve a real problem and solve it generously. A town hall, a hospital or a school fitting panels and batteries has nowhere to find co-financing, and the formula of 100% of eligible costs, with pre-financing of up to 30%, is the only one that works for tight local budgets. The list of beneficiaries was drawn broadly, the technical conditions are written with verifiable thresholds rather than elastic wording, and the ban on lead, NiCd and NiMH technologies shows the text was written by someone who knows what is on the market. The weak part is not the generosity, it is the arithmetic between the two ceilings and the silence on the calendar.
The first observation emerges from setting the two guides side by side, which otherwise are read separately. On the storage line, the ministry accepts up to 200,000 euro excluding VAT for each MWh installed, and a footnote says the figure was set on the basis of a market analysis. In the solar call, the same ministry requires each MW of panels to be accompanied by a battery of 2 to 4 hours, that is between 2 and 4 MWh, and caps the whole package at 900,000 euro per MW installed. If we apply the price the ministry itself considers acceptable for storage, the minimum compulsory battery eats 400,000 euro of the ceiling, and the maximum permitted one 800,000. That leaves between 500,000 and 100,000 euro per MW for the photovoltaic plant itself, for construction, connection, design, site supervision and testing. The ceilings were calculated separately and do not talk to each other, and an applicant who sizes the battery at the maximum permitted finds that the rest of the project has to be paid from the local budget, even though the guide promises 100% of eligible costs.
The second observation also concerns sizing, but from the angle of method. The „between 2 and 4 hours” rule appears in both guides, yet applies to different things. In storage it is measured against usable energy, that is against rated capacity multiplied by the depth of discharge, which must be at least 80%. In solar it is measured directly against rated capacity. For the same plant output, the first guide requires a rated battery at least a quarter larger than the second, without either text explaining why. Both guides, moreover, carry traces of the other: the monitoring obligation in the storage guide speaks of a solar plant for self-consumption, while the technical criterion in the solar guide speaks of an existing plant. From here also emerges the real limit of the storage line: to reach the ceiling of 10 million euro, an applicant would need 50 MWh installed, that is usable energy of 40 MWh, that is an existing renewable plant of at least 10 MW. Very few public institutions in Romania have anything of the sort. For the rest, the calculation looks different: a 400 kW plant gives entitlement to at most 400,000 euro, a 100 kW one to at most 100,000. The 150 million euro of the call will not be shared among fifteen large beneficiaries, as the ceiling might suggest, but among several hundred or even more than a thousand small projects, and the volume of files the Agency for Financing Rural Investments has to process is of an altogether different order from the one the budget suggests.
The third observation is about time and about who bears it. The European Investment Bank confirmed the two priority investments on 6 October 2025, the European Commission decided on disbursement on 10 December 2025, and the guides appear 340 and 275 days after those moments respectively, with internal referral notes dated on the very day the orders were signed. The deadline for completing the investments has stayed, however, at 31 December 2029, and from the 1,207 days that remain must be subtracted everything that passes until the session opens, which has no date. Meanwhile, the guides impose rigid deadlines on the addressee: five working days to answer clarifications, on pain of rejection, at most two rounds of clarification, rejection if a document is not sent on time during contracting. The administration’s deadlines, by contrast, are referred without exception to the „operational procedure”: the deadline for lodging appeals, the deadline for deciding them, the deadline for uploading documents at contracting. That procedure was not published together with the guides. The asymmetry is visible in the form of the act too: the annex reproduced in the Official Gazette of Romania keeps in its header the blank spaces „nr. ………./……………..”, that is the number and date of the order approving it, while the cover reads „Versiunea 0 – 2026”.
Finally, it is worth saying plainly what „first come, first assessed” means for a small commune. There is no score, there are no tie-break criteria and there is no reserve by category of applicant. The institution that already has a feasibility study, a council decision and a clean land registry extract submits on day one. The one that has only just heard of the call needs a council meeting, a procurement of design services and a study drawn up with ANRE-certified staff, that is months. When the window opens without long notice, the difference between the two will not be the quality of the project but the age of the file.
What should be changed
- The opening and closing dates of the session, written into Chapter 1.2 of each guide, or at least a minimum notice period between the announcement and the first day of submission. Effect: the applicant knows how many months he has for the feasibility study and for the council decision, and the penalty of automatic rejection acquires a deadline to be measured against.
- Correction of obligation 2 in Chapter 8 of the storage guide, so that it concerns the storage system that was funded, not a solar plant. Effect: over the five monitoring years, the funding body can require exactly what it paid for, and the beneficiary knows what he answers for. As it now stands, the obligation targets equipment outside the project.
- Aligning the ceiling of 900,000 euro per MW with the price of 200,000 euro per MWh of storage, either by raising the ceiling or by setting a separate ceiling for the storage component, as in the first call. Effect: a project that meets the minimum requirement of 2 hours of storage no longer ends up paying for the panels from the local budget, and the promise of 100% of eligible costs holds in figures, not only in principle.
- Publication of the operational procedure referred to in both guides, together with the guides. Effect: the deadline for lodging an appeal, the deadline for deciding it and the deadline for returning the signed contract become known before submission, not after a project has already been rejected.
- An explicit rule on combining the two calls for the same applicant. Effect: an institution that needs both new panels on a building and batteries at an existing plant learns from the guide whether it can claim 10 million euro twice or whether the ceiling is single per beneficiary, instead of finding out at assessment.
- Harmonising the storage sizing rule between the two guides, by measuring against the same quantity, usable energy or rated capacity, and naming the reference plant consistently. Effect: the same 1 MW plant gets the same battery requirement whichever call it falls under, and designers no longer have to remember that the „2 to 4 hours” range means something different in each of the two documents and refers, within the same guide, sometimes to a photovoltaic plant and sometimes to an existing one.
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. 774 of 11 September 2026 168 pages PDF, 1.9 MB the act starts on page 2
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