Bulgaria signs major renewable energy deal with EBRD

The Bulgarian Ministry of Energy and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have signed two agreements to develop renewable energy in the country.

As an important part of the country's recovery and sustainable development plan, the agreements will support the addition of new solar PV capacity and energy storage to store renewable electricity (RESTORE) within the country's infrastructure.

The EBRD will analyze all existing energy storage technologies to determine the most suitable technologies for the country and will organize tenders for the delivery of the two turnkey systems.

Last year, Bulgarian power company AES signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the Bulgarian Ministry of Energy – as reported by our sister site Energy-storage.news – through the development of a 100MW solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage system (BESS ) and the 80MWh standalone BESS project near Sofia.

Bulgaria has 1.5GW of installed capacity by 2022, according to a report by SolarPower Europe, and under its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), Bulgaria aims to reach 3.3GW of installed solar PV capacity by 2030. However, the technology will account for only 2.6% of total electricity generation by 2040.

Those targets stand in stark contrast to the number of projects that have so far required grid capacity and cumulatively reached 30GW last year, solar PV alone, according to Vladimir Tabutov, chief executive of developer and EPC firm HEC Solar, on a panel at Large Scale Solar Europe last month.