150 million euro for industrial batteries: who can take up to 15 million and on what terms

The State is putting up 150 million euro for industrial batteries to store electricity from renewable sources. The Ministry of Energy has approved the State aid scheme for stand-alone battery energy storage installations, the name the official documents use for them, financed from the Modernisation Fund. It is the ministry’s third intervention on this fund in recent months, after the one through which the deadlines for renewable energy investments were extended to 2028. Order No 745 of 16 July 2026 was published in Official Gazette of Romania No 610 of 27 July 2026 and entered into force on the date of publication.

The scheme has already passed the European filter. The European Commission authorised it through Decision No C(2026) 1588 final of 6 March 2026, in case SA.121308, and the Competition Council issued opinion No 2656 of 25 February 2026. On 11 March 2026 the European Investment Bank confirmed that the investments fall within the areas eligible for financing from the Modernisation Fund.

Stand-alone installations are batteries connected directly to the transmission or distribution grid, which do not serve a particular power plant but take in energy when output exceeds consumption and deliver it at peak demand. They are the missing piece in a system with a lot of wind and solar energy, where output does not overlap with consumption.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is the budget and the way it is divided up. The scheme has a total estimated budget of 150 million euro, non-repayable amounts from the Modernisation Fund, and the estimated number of beneficiaries is around ten. If the money is not fully used up after the first bidding round, the Ministry of Energy organises a new procedure for the remaining amount.

The second effect sets how much a company can take. The maximum aid is 15 million euro per undertaking, no matter how many projects it submits. The aid intensity can reach up to 100% of eligible costs, precisely because selection is made through a competitive bidding procedure, and it is the competition between bidders that keeps the price down.

The third effect is the technical ceiling, the one that counts when the bid is calculated. The value of the aid cannot exceed 69,000 euro for every MWh of storage installed. This is the limit that turns the bidding into a competition on efficiency rather than on project size.

The fourth effect concerns the project’s eligibility thresholds. The installation must be new, located in Romania, have at least 1 MW of power and a capacity to power ratio of at least 2:1, meaning that it can run for at least two hours at the installed power. Projects that merely replace older storage installations are not eligible.

The fifth effect is the timetable, with a penalty attached. The scheme applies until 31 December 2030, and the investments must be completed and commissioned within 48 months of the aid being granted. Missing the deadline triggers penalties of 0.01% per day of the value of the aid, plus the monetary policy interest rate of the National Bank of Romania, except in cases of force majeure.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until now, the Modernisation Fund has mainly financed renewable energy generation and self-consumption. Stand-alone storage had no scheme of its own, even though without it the energy produced at peaks of wind and sun remains partly unused. This is the substantive novelty.

The selection mechanism is changing as well. Earlier schemes under this fund worked, to a large extent, on the principle of submission and verification, whereas here everything goes through a competitive bidding procedure: the provider publishes the selection criteria at least six weeks before the submission deadline, and the winners are those ranked highest.

Applicants can be micro-enterprises, small, medium-sized or large companies, including newly established ones, Romanian or from another Member State, provided they are registered with the Trade Register by the time the funding contract is signed. Projects are submitted individually only, partnerships are excluded.

What remains, however, is the pattern already familiar from financing under this fund: firm deadlines and penalties for delay. It is the same logic the ministry applied when it set the 2028 deadline for renewable self-consumption investments.

On the transparency side, individual aid exceeding 100,000 euro is published within six months of being granted, while the scheme, the contracts, the payments and any recoveries are uploaded to the National State Aid Register, with deadlines of 7 to 10 working days for each category.

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