Two member states, two very different storage curves
European Union funding is producing sharply uneven results in Southeast Europe's battery storage build-out. Bulgaria has doubled its capacity from about 3 GW to roughly 6 GW in a year, helped by around €700 million in EU grants alongside regulatory changes that drew private investment, while Greece is still catching up despite a far larger solar fleet.
Greece's solar power capacity more than tripled between 2020 and 2025, yet battery deployment has not kept pace. Athens has held three rounds of auctions for standalone batteries since 2023, but only brought a first significant batch online in April. Government figures put total Greek storage at around 1 GW by the end of the year — a small fraction of Bulgaria's capacity.
Athens wants 5 GW more by 2030
Greece's energy ministry says it is working to speed up storage deployment with the help of EU funds, explicitly linking the effort to lowering energy prices for consumers. Officials have said another 5 GW of battery capacity is expected to come online by 2030, on top of the 1 GW expected by the end of this year.
The price gap explains the political urgency. Eurostat data show Greek retail electricity prices excluding taxes and levies averaged €0.1967 per kWh in the first half of the year, compared with €0.1117 per kWh in Bulgaria — a spread of roughly eight eurocents per kilowatt-hour between two neighbouring member states.
The EU-wide bottleneck: approvals and grid connections
Greece's lag is not unique. Across the European Union, governments have for years sought to develop battery storage to balance the intermittent output of solar and wind, but progress has been delayed by long waits for regulatory approvals and grid connections. Bulgaria, despite its rapid growth, faces the same constraints: lengthy approval procedures and delays in securing grid connections have slowed its rollout, and the network needs further investment to absorb additional capacity.
Analysts nonetheless expect adoption to pick up across the bloc, particularly in larger markets such as Germany and Italy, where high energy prices and supply disruption concerns are pushing utilities and investors toward storage. The policy lesson from the Bulgarian-Greek comparison is that grant money alone does not determine outcomes: permitting speed, grid access and market design decide which member states convert EU support into megawatts first.
Source: Euronext financial news / Eurostat
This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.