Greece launches first 400MW tranche of energy storage grant auctions

It is the first round of a state-led procurement programme that will see 900MW-1GW of projects funded with grants, with funding coming in large part from EU-wide clean energy-focused schemes.

Greece is part of a handful of countries that have used the money to fund energy storage, alongside Romania, Finland, Croatia, Estonia and, as reported last week, Slovenia.

Greece has an overall energy storage deployment goal of 3GW by 2030 to facilitate a 70% renewable energy target.

Projects in this round will be eligible for grants of up to €200,000 (US$218,000) per MW of installed power.

No technologies were specified, but lithium-ion batteries are the market standard for the vast majority of new energy storage projects today. Some conditions, such as a minimum round-trip efficiency (RTE) of 80%, were included.

This would most likely mean things like compressed air energy storage (CAES) would be excluded as well as most flow battery technologies which generally have at the very most an RTE of 80%.

Projects have until 10 July – in three weeks’ time – to be proposed, with a shortlist of potential winning projects communicated a month later on 3 August. Final evaluation results will be announced a week later, on 10 August.

Winning projects will need to come online by the end of 2025.

There will be two more rounds of 300MW each this year, with the next one including any capacity which is not won in the current process. This means a total of 1GW to be procured through the programme.

Swathes of projects totalling 600MW of battery storage were recently approved by the RAE as companies prepare to submit project proposals, covered by Energy-Storage.news.

You can access the RAE’s documentation relating to the announcement here, in Greek.