Croatia will provide some €500 million (US$534 million) in subsidies for battery energy storage system (BESS) technology, a government minister has said.
Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Damir Habijan revealed the funding, part of a larger €1.6 billion for energy projects, at the JANAF conference in Zagreb earlier this month, according to state-owned news agency Zelena Hrvatska. The JANAF event covers the JANAF oil pipeline and storage system which spans Croatia.
The bulk of that funding will go towards liquified natural gas (LNG) pipelines and infrastructure but €500 million will go to large BESS units, Habijan said.
“All electricity producers who will not immediately release the electricity produced from renewable sources into the network will have such large storage tanks ready for batteries,” he said.
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The funding will come from Croatia’s share of the European Union-wide Recovery and Resilience scheme aimed at mitigating the negative economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Similar grant schemes for BESS have used that funding in Spain, Romania, Finland and Greece to name a few.
The minister didn’t give more details about what kind of funding scheme the €500 million would be nor when it would come into effect in remarks reported by the state news agency. However, most other schemes using Recovery and Resilience funding have been via a mix of capex and opex grants per MW of construction, with an auction to decide which projects receive the funding.
Companies active in the Croatian energy storage market include developer-IPPs NGEN and Woodburn Capital while the country is also notable for being the home of Rimac Group, the EV technology firm which last year launched its first BESS product, the Sinestack.
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