Battery storage projects in Romania and Bulgaria are securing financing as lenders raise due-diligence requirements, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) financing Scornicesti and joining Raiffeisen in the Tenevo package. The three projects described for 2026 show why a bankable battery energy storage system (BESS) needs technical, grid, market and contract analysis, not just a forecast revenue spread.
In Romania, the EBRD’s financing package 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 providing a 60 million euros financing package for Tenevo, which has 246 MW of capacity and 512.5 MWh of storage. The two projects have combined capacity of 373 MW.
In North Macedonia, the Bitola project is designed for 100 MW and 400 MWh, with an estimated cost of 98 million euros. It has sovereign and concessional support.
What lenders need to test
A lender-grade BESS assessment needs a full operating, market and degradation case. Commercial banks should examine the physical asset and its long-term performance, modelling usable energy rather than nameplate energy. That analysis should cover round-trip efficiency at different operating points, auxiliary consumption, annual degradation, warranted throughput, augmentation assumptions, temperature effects and availability guarantees. A low engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) price cannot replace a credible long-term performance curve.
Lenders should verify grid connection rights, charging and export limits, metering, dispatch control, eligibility for balancing products, network charges and any limits on taking part in different markets simultaneously. Contracts with an optimiser or trader should set out who controls dispatch and who carries imbalance and penalty risks.
Revenue models should run hourly scenarios for day-ahead, intraday and ancillary services, applying separate downside haircuts to each. They should also account for price-spread compression as competing batteries enter service. Stress tests need to include years with low volatility, high degradation, delayed availability and reduced balancing prices.
The credit package should cover 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 maintains adequate debt-service coverage after realistic technical and market stress, rather than merely showing an attractive equity internal rate of return in the base case.
