May 19 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria has submitted for approval by the EU Modernisation Fund an investment plan for the deployment of nine heavy-vehicle hydrogen refuelling stations by 2028, Milena Tsoleva, head of the project management department of Bulgaria's state-owned Electricity System Operator (ESO), said on Friday.
Currently, the European hydrogen refuelling network for trucks spreads as far south as Vienna, Austria, but farther south neighbouring Serbia plans to construct two hydrogen stations, by the end of 2024 and in 2026, respectively, Tsoleva said at the Re-Source Southeast 2023 conference in Sofia.
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The project, which also involves the construction of some 300 grid-connected electric vehicle (EV) charge points ranging from slow to hyper fast charging, at ESO's substations across Bulgaria, is worth 93 million euro ($100.4 million), ESO told SeeNews in an emailed statement. The first tranche, of 40 million euro, is expected to be disbursed by the Modernisation Fund by the end of 2023.
Bulgaria, on the transportation and logistics route connecting Europe with Turkey and Asia, is the next link in that chain. The planned green hydrogen refuelling stations will be rolled out in the capital Sofia, in the two major cities on the Black Sea coast - Varna and Burgas, as well as in cities near the motorways linking Bulgaria with Romania, Greece, Serbia, North Macedonia and Turkey, Tsoleva explained.
In addition, the hydrogen valley project in Stara Zagora, south-central Bulgaria, will also include a refuelling station, thus becoming the tenth site which will help provide the EU requirement for maximum distance of 200 kilometres between refuelling points.
In March, the EU reached political agreement on a planned new law, the regulation for the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure (AFIR), which stipulates that hydrogen refuelling stations serving both cars and trucks must be deployed from 2030 onwards at every 200 km along the TEN-T core network of European roads.
The EV charging stations will be powered exclusively with renewable energy, either sourced from the grid or by adding energy storage facilities at the charging stations. The green energy will be either self-produced or secured via long-term supply contracts, Tsoleva said.
Thirdly, the national pilot project will involve the creation of a charging infrastructure management and payments platform, Tsoleva added. The platform will initially serve the charging stations from the project, before being opened to all other charging infrastructure owners.
Public transport operators will be prioritised as network users, with municipalities already seeing a range of investment proposals and disposing with financing through EU structural funds as well. Transportation and logistics companies are also major potential users in light of their plans for electrifying parts of their fleets, Tsoleva said. The project is also crucial to raise the uptake of EVs by private users, given Bulgaria's ageing car fleet.
Starting from the third year after deployment, about 40-45% of the capacity of the charging infrastructure is expected to be used, and its capacity should be used in full by 2030 or 2032, Tsoleva said.
ESO's analysis projects the number of EVs in Bulgaria to reach 200,000 by 2030, with 600,000 MWh of electricity per year needed to cover their consumption needs. By 2040, these power requirements are forecast to reach 6 million MWh. By comparison, Bulgaria's current vehicle fleet uses motor fuels equivalent to 45 million MWh of electricity.
($ = 0.9265 euro)