INTERVIEW: Aukera Energy raising finance for 299.75 MWh Romanian BESS project
Head of storage Bozkurt Aydinoglu, has told NPM that Aukera Energy is in conversations with potential lenders as it looks to secure debt financing for a 299.75 MWh BESS project that it is developing in Ialomița county, Romania.
The project is approaching ready-to-build but still requires its building and environmental permits, which are expected in Q1 2025. “There isn’t much further development we have to do, it is just simply a question of submitting the required studies and just going through the process that leads to the building permit being issued,” said Aydinoglu.
Speaking of the developer’s bid to gain financing, Aydinoglu offered few details but said: “We have spoken to international lenders [and] we have also spoken to local banks. We’ve also spoken to the more obvious lenders that can finance projects with merchant risk because they have a mandate to do so in countries in Central and Eastern Europe.”
He added that Aukera has access to private debt-type options that it will investigate for this project.
Aydinoglu declined to disclose the total amount of investment required but said the group is encouraged by falling prices and anticipates that equipment costs in 2025 will fall by about 15–20% compared to this year.
NPM understands that battery construction Capex in Romania currently comes in around around EUR 200,000/MWh.
Aydinoglu was also reticent to share the amount of debt financing that Aukera is looking to secure, but said that assuming a merchant revenue stack the developer would target leverage of between 50–65%, which aligns with levels that can be obtained in other markets in Europe.
For this storage project, the mainstay of Aukera’s revenue stack will be wholesale trading in Romania’s day-ahead market..
Aydinoglu noted that the developer is not banking heavily on aFRR (automatic frequency restoration reserve), which in Romania currently offers healthy revenues for first movers, “because we don’t know how many years of elevated income our batteries will earn from the aFRR market until it saturates”.
He added: “Our view is that for the cost of capital that one would reasonably apply to Romania, the wholesale market on its own provides a strong base for revenues.”
Founder of Romanian storage developer Silmaril Storage, Filip Radu, recently told NPM that the 12-month average value for Romania’s day-ahead market was about EUR 125 per MWh.
As well as the debt financing Aukera is now pursuing for the 299.75 MW project, the developer has already been awarded EUR 9.89m in funding from the Romanian government to support construction.
In order to build the plant within the deadlines of this subsidy mechanism, provided through Romania’s recovery and resilience fund (PNRR), Aukera needs to close financing by the end of Q2 2025, Aydinoglu said.
Aukera intends to deliver the project in two stages, delivering 150.72 MW in stage one, during 2026, and an additional 101.53 MW in stage two (2028). The final approved capacity is 252.25 MW.
Aukera’s total BESS pipeline is in excess of 2 GW across various locations in Romania. Another 200 MW project is at an advanced stage and approaching RtB.
*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM Europe subscribers.
