The energy regulator in Greece has cancelled the country’s third large-scale energy storage procurement auction due to confusion over limits on how much power capacity could be bid in per participant, with a view to relaunching the scheme.
The Regulatory Authority for Energy, Waste, and Water (RAAEY) announced the decision last week (13 December). The auction for capex and opex grants for grid-scale energy storage projects was aiming to support 200MW of projects, following earlier rounds which awarded support to around 400MW and 300MW in August 2023 and February 2024 respectively.
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The third auction set a rule that single projects could bid in no more than 100MW of capacity, while if a company had multiple projects in the auction, those could bid in no more than 50MW each. The RAAEY said that there were ‘ambiguities regarding the application’ of those rules which may have resulted in ‘non-uniform’ applications of the rule.
“It was found that there is no uniform understanding by the participants regarding the rule of the
maximum power limit per participant and per SAHE (project), with a serious risk of different treatment regarding the subordination of the submitted offers in this rule,” the RAAEY said in its announcement.
It said that in order to clarify the rules, it would need to cancel the third auction and then re-launch it following the issue of another notice. The auction will reportedly be relaunched in early 2025. It is targeting projects in the region of Western Macedonia or the municipalities of Megalopolis, Tripoli, Gortynia and Oichalia in the Peloponnese Region.
The first auction awarded a weighted average price of €49,748 per MW per year while the second was €46,680/MW/year (around US$50,000).
The three auctions are being funded by Greece’s portion of the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Plan, the bloc’s programme to mitigate the negative economic effects of the Covid pandemic, but which has increasingly been used to support renewables and energy storage. Other EU countries Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria have used the funding to support storage.
Greece is also supporting energy storage via contracts for difference-like (CfD) auctions for co-located renewables and storage, also with EU funding.
Sungrow agrees 105MWh supply deal with KTISTOR
In related news, inverter and battery energy storage system (BESS) company Sungrow has signed a deal with engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm KTISTOR Energy for the deployment of 105MWh of its PowerTitan 2.0 BESS for multiple projects in Greece.
The deal covers four projects, two of which won in the aforementioned auctions. The projects are:
- Project Dokos in Rodopi, with a license of 8.875 MW for two hours, offering an initial installed usable capacity of 25.065 MWh.
- Project Petra in Kozani, with a license of 7.8 MW for two hours, providing 20.055 MWh
- Agia Anna, in Viotia, licensed for 7.8 MW for three hours, with an initial installed usable capacity of 30.09 MWh
- Agia Anna II in Viotia, licensed for 7.8 MW for three hours, with an initial installed usable capacity of 30.09 MWh
