UK-headquartered independent power producer Econergy said Thursday it has energised a 70 MW / 141 MWh fully-merchant battery energy storage system co-located with its 92 MW Parau 1 solar plant in Brasov County, Romania. It is the country's first operational co-located solar-plus-storage asset and comes online at a moment when the Romanian grid is short of flexibility to absorb an accelerating pipeline of new renewables.
Merchant model, real revenue
The 141 MWh BESS runs entirely on merchant revenue: the battery charges from the grid at low or negative price hours and discharges when day-ahead and balancing prices peak. Econergy expects roughly €9.7 million a year in storage-market revenue based on 2026 spreads. Because the site sits behind the same 40 MW grid connection as the existing 92 MW solar array, capex on interconnection was avoided — one of the reasons co-location has become the default merchant BESS play across Central and Eastern Europe.
Romania catches up
Romania has been slow to build storage relative to its solar pipeline, but Bucharest has been closing the gap this year through Modernisation Fund grants and a targeted BESS tender. Parau 1 sets a template other Romanian solar developers are expected to follow: retrofit merchant storage to existing sites, monetise price spreads, and use the same substation. Econergy has previously signed a €40.5 million financing package for a similar solar-plus-storage build at Oradea and is progressing a 150 MW project in the same country.
Regional BESS wave
Central and Eastern Europe is quietly becoming a BESS beachhead. Bulgaria's IPP-driven build-out crossed 840 MWh of completions this quarter, Scottish planners cleared two 10 GWh Field Energy projects in a single day, and Saxony broke ground on a 1.6 GWh gigabattery at Boxberg — all pointing to a merchant revenue market maturing well ahead of what many utilities expected.
Reporting based on coverage from ess-news, pv magazine, Energy Global, energynomics.ro and reNEWS.