Greece has canceled its third auction for standalone energy storage plants using batteries, which was initially scheduled for this month. The Regulatory Authority for Energy, Waste, and Water (RAEWW or RAAEY) announced that the auction will be relaunched early next year. The decision to cancel the auction was made to ensure transparency and fair competition, as companies had difficulty fully understanding a rule regarding the maximum capacity per participant and per investment.
RAEWW assured that the documents and letters of guarantee already submitted by participants would remain valid when the auction is rescheduled. The third auction was planned to allocate a total capacity of 200 MW with a storage duration of four hours, providing a total of 800 MWh. The energy storage facilities were set to be located in the Western Macedonia region of northern Greece, as well as in the municipalities of Megalopolis, Tripoli, Gortynia, and Oichalia in the Peloponnese. Auction winners were to receive a grant of EUR 200,000 per MW, with a price ceiling of EUR 145,000 per MW per year.
The combined capacity from all three auctions is expected to reach 900 MW. These energy storage units are crucial for Greece to manage renewable energy curtailments, which have already reached 3.7% this year and are projected to increase further in 2025. However, the cancellation of the auction has raised concerns about delays in the development of Greece’s first battery storage systems.
The projects selected in the first two auctions are already facing delays due to the slow licensing process by the network operator, the Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO or Admie). While IPTO claims the delays are due to careful consideration of the system’s needs rather than bureaucratic inefficiencies, the slow pace of licensing has added to concerns about the timely rollout of these projects.
The deadline for commissioning the first batch of projects is set for the end of 2025, although there is a possibility of extending this deadline by a few months. As for the projects from the third auction, they were initially slated to begin operations by January 31, 2026, but it remains uncertain whether this timeline will be adjusted to accommodate the delays.
