February 15 (SeeNews) - The Bulgarian ministry of innovation said on Wednesday it started accepting applications from companies under a 200 million levs ($109.5 million/102.25 million euro) EU-backed grant to support the development of solar photovoltaic and battery storage projects.
Businesses have until May 15 to apply under the procedure, which is funded out of Bulgaria's EU-approved national Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) and is expected to draw very strong investor interest, the innovation ministry said in a press release.
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Local companies, ranging from micro-companies to enterprises with up to 3,000 staff, are eligible for grants of between 75,000 levs and 1 million levs. The grants, which involve co-financing of up to 50%, will finance the construction of self-consumption solar parks of up to 1 MW in capacity, which must be combined with local energy storage facilities.
Under the conditions of the grant, the solar-plus-storage system must be installed on a building or property which is fully owned by the applicant and the generated renewable electricity may not be sold to the grid.
Bulgaria aims to achieve a minimum 27.09% share of renewables in its gross energy consumption over the next decade, under its Integrated Energy and Climate Plan for 2021-2030. Last month, data from Eurostat showed that Bulgaria had the lowest share of gross final energy consumption from renewable sources in 2021 among the five EU members from Southeast Europe (SEE), of 16.8%.
In late January, the European Commission said it will refer Bulgaria to court for failing to pass legislation on the development of renewable energy and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in line with the EU renewable energy directive.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)