Renalfa IPP started commercial operation of its first utility scale25MW/55 MWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) at the beginning of June. The BESS is Bulgaria’s southwestern city of Razlog. It is connected to the TSO grid and co-located with a 33 MWp PV plant. The BESS enables the time shift of the solar peak production and arbitration on the electricity market. 

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The project is the first sizeable storage investment in the country,the largest operating BESS system in Bulgaria and one of the first BESS of such scale in Eastern Europe.

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Commercial management and optimization of the BESS is done by the leading electricity trader in the region KER Toki Power. Via the trader’s aggregator platform, the system participates in capacity and balancing market,providing aFFR and mFFR services to the grid.  The storage system was designed, installed and integrated into the grid by Solarpro Technology, while the main BESS components were supplied by Hithium and Kehua. 

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“This co-located utility scale battery marks the start of hybridisation of our over 1 GW portfolio of renewable assets in operation and in construction,”Nick Antonov, spokesperson for Renalfa IPP, said. “We are about to introduce similar solutions in the other wind and PV assets in the region, including Hungary and Romania”. 

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He added: “The main goal is to fully mitigate the PV profile risk of the generators. In the wider context of the energy transition, this facility demonstrates how advancements in technology are making renewable generation far more useful, dispatchable and flexible to supply and demand”.

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“The planning, installation, and integration of this system, in parallel with the generating solar plant, and into the TSO grid was a real challenge. Thanks to the expertise of the team and the good cooperation with the suppliers of the main equipment, we were able to put the project into commercial operation in a very short time,” Adelin Antonov from Solarpro said.

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Renalfa IPP is a Vienna based developer and independent power producer established as a JV between Renalfa Solarpro Group GmbH and the French infrastructure fund manager RGreen Invest.

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The company owns and develops PV, BESS and wind projects with joint capacity of around 2 GW in Bulgaria, Hungary, North Macedonia and Romania, of which more than 455 MW of PV, wind and BESS already operational and more than550 MW in construction.

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Solarpro Holding, a part of Renalfa Solarpro Group, is a leading European EPC and O&M provider combining the experience of over 1,100 professionals who over the last 15 years designed,built and integrated PV plants with more than 7 GW installed capacity in more than 30 countries around the globe.

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Solarpro is a multi-technology Integrator and innovator with expertise in hybrid projects by implementing PV, Wind, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and green Hydrogen. The current pipeline for projects in construction of the company consists of projects with overall capacity of over2 GWh.

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