Battery storage projects with a combined capacity of 373 MW in Romania and Bulgaria are receiving financing as lenders raise their due-diligence standards. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is financing the Scornicesti project in Romania and has joined Raiffeisen in the Tenevo financing package in Bulgaria. These 2026 projects highlight the need for comprehensive technical, grid, market and contractual assessments, rather than relying solely on forecast revenue spreads.
In Romania, the financing package from the EBRD for the standalone Scornicesti battery project is worth up to 44 million euros. The project has 127 MW of power capacity and 254 MWh of storage. In Bulgaria, the EBRD and Raiffeisen are backing Tenevo with a 60 million euros package. Tenevo has 246 MW of capacity and 512.5 MWh of storage.
In North Macedonia, the Bitola battery project has 100 MW of capacity and 400 MWh of storage. Its estimated cost is 98 million euros, and it has sovereign and concessional support.
Technical and market tests for lenders
A lender-grade battery energy storage system (BESS) assessment needs a complete operating, market and degradation case, not only an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) price and a forecast spread. Commercial banks should assess the physical asset and its long-term performance. Models should use usable energy rather than nameplate energy.
The asset model should account for round-trip efficiency at different operating points, auxiliary consumption, annual degradation, warranted throughput, augmentation assumptions, temperature effects and availability guarantees. A low EPC price is not a substitute for a credible long-term performance curve. Lenders should also verify grid connection rights, charging and export limits, metering, dispatch control, eligibility for balancing products, network charges and restrictions on simultaneous participation in different markets.
Contracts with optimisers or traders should define who controls dispatch and who carries imbalance and penalty risks. Revenue models should run hourly scenarios for the day-ahead market, intraday trading and ancillary services. They should apply separate downside haircuts and account for price-spread compression as more batteries enter service.
Stress tests should cover years with low volatility, high degradation, delayed availability and lower balancing prices. The credit package should address operating risks through EPC liquidated damages, battery warranties, operations and maintenance support, insurance, reserve accounts and sponsor completion support. A project is bankable when its downside case still delivers adequate debt-service coverage after realistic technical and market stress, rather than merely producing an attractive equity internal rate of return in the base case.
