Romania has approved more than 527 MW of battery storage capacity in a single regulatory round, adding another major tranche to a market that is rapidly shifting from renewable capacity expansion towards flexibility.
Energy regulator ANRE approved authorisations covering 593.5 MW of new capacity at its Sept. 22 meeting.
The package included 132.65 MW of co-located storage and 394.57 MW of standalone batteries, taking the storage component to about 527.2 MW.
A further 66.25 MW of photovoltaic capacity was included in the authorisation package.
ANRE also granted commercial-operation licences covering 239.2 MW, including 185.4 MW of solar, 49.8 MW of wind and 4 MW of standalone storage.
The scale of the battery approvals is increasingly significant for Romania’s power market.
Solar and wind additions are expanding rapidly, but the country is also experiencing extreme price volatility and periods of heavy import dependence.
That creates a direct commercial case for batteries capable of charging during low-price renewable hours and discharging when electricity becomes scarce.
Romania has recently seen electricity prices fall close to zero during solar-heavy periods before rising above €200-300/MWh later in the day.
Those spreads provide a stronger revenue signal for storage than annual average wholesale prices.
The approvals also come while both Cernavodă nuclear reactors remain unavailable and hydro conditions are weak.
Batteries cannot replace weeks of lost nuclear generation, but they can reduce exposure to the most expensive import hours and provide balancing services as renewable penetration rises.
The market is therefore entering a different stage.
Romania’s first renewable investment cycle focused on adding solar and wind megawatts.
The next is increasingly about adding enough storage to make those megawatts usable when the system actually needs them.
A 527 MW approval round shows how quickly that shift is progressing.
