Renewable developer Econergy has placed a 70 MW/141 MWh battery into commercial operation alongside its Parau 1 solar plant in Romania, creating one of the country’s increasingly important merchant solar-storage combinations.
The battery operates with the existing 92 MW solar plant in Brasov county, giving the site combined installed capacity of 162 MW.
Unlike batteries restricted to charging directly from their associated renewable plant, the Parau system can also charge from the electricity network.
That allows Econergy to buy electricity during low or negative-price periods and sell it when wholesale prices rise, exposing the battery directly to merchant arbitrage opportunities.
Total investment in the combined project reached around €85 million.
Econergy is planning further storage additions across Romania. Its domestic battery pipeline totals 521 MW and more than 1 GWh, including proposed capacity at Ratesti, Oradea and Ovidiu.
The company also has around 13 GW of projects under development across eight European markets, with storage representing roughly half of the overall pipeline.
For Romania, the project illustrates how developers are beginning to use existing grid connections more efficiently. Adding batteries to operational solar sites can increase the commercial value of the connection while allowing generators to shift output away from increasingly crowded midday hours.
