North Macedonia is structuring its planned 100 MW / 400 MWh Bitola battery as strategic grid infrastructure, rather than solely as a merchant trading asset. The project is estimated to cost EUR 98 million. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is considering a sovereign-guaranteed loan of up to EUR 33.1 million.
The four-hour system is also expected to receive funding from KfW, concessional resources from the Clean Technology Fund and an investment grant from the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF). The EBRD loan remains under consideration, with these additional sources expected to form part of the financing package. The project scope extends beyond the battery to include central SCADA, generation-planning and trading software. It also covers IT and cybersecurity infrastructure for ESM, alongside the planned battery storage capacity.
Grid integration and financing model
System integration and dispatch quality affect the value of storage. The financing structure recognises benefits that may be difficult to monetise under a purely merchant model. These include lower renewable curtailment, greater system flexibility and improved balancing capability.
Public and concessional capital can support those benefits even if day-ahead arbitrage alone would not sustain the same level of debt. The project offers a potential financing model for other Western Balkan utilities. Under this approach, a first large battery energy storage system can be financed as a grid-modernisation platform, with merchant revenues strengthening the economics rather than supporting the entire credit case.
