What changed at Parau 1
Econergy connected a 70 megawatt battery to Parau 1, its solar plant in Brasov county, Romania, on September 2, 2026, turning it into a solar battery storage plant that earns money only by trading power on the open market. The battery holds 141 megawatt hours and sits beside a 92 megawatt solar plant that has run since early 2024, bringing the site to 162 megawatts combined. Econergy owns the whole project, indirectly, through a subsidiary named Econergy International Limited.
The solar plant has run since early 2024. The battery connected on September 2, 2026.
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| Solar plant | 92 |
| Battery | 70 |
| Combined | 162 |
Why this solar battery storage plant needs no subsidy
The battery earns nothing from a fixed price government contract. It is fully merchant, meaning every euro it makes comes from buying and selling electricity on the open market rather than from a guaranteed rate. It charges when power is cheap or priced below zero, drawing from the grid as well as from the solar plant beside it. The battery also has its own direct connection to the grid, separate from the solar plant, a feature the filing Econergy submitted to investors calls unusual for a battery built next to an existing solar plant. It discharges and sells power back when prices climb.
What the battery is projected to earn
Figures cover the storage addition alone, not the combined Parau 1 site, over its first 5 years.
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| Revenue | 9.742 |
| Operating profit | 7.981 |
| Cash generated | 6.320 |
The filing Econergy submitted prices the storage addition construction at 21.343 million euros and projects average earnings of 9.742 million euros a year over its first 5 years. After operating costs, it projects 6.320 million euros a year in cash generated. Dividing the build cost by that cash figure gives a payback of about 3.4 years, a number calculated by this site from 2 figures in the filing, matching a payback the trade press covering the same filing reaches independently in its own words.
Econergy leaders call the project a pattern rather than a one time event.
This is what the move from developing renewables to operating them as an IPP looks like in practice.
Eyal Podhorzer, chief executive officer of Econergy. Source 3.
Parau 1 is a great example of what becomes possible for owner operators when storage is integrated to an existing renewable asset.
Joshua Murphy, director of energy storage at Econergy. Source 3.
How Parau 1 fits inside the storage boom in Romania
These 4 figures come from 3 different sources. The Parau 1 and Ratesti figures are project scale figures Econergy itself reports, source 1. The Parau 2 figure comes from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development own financing announcement for that project, source 4. The Giurgiu county figure comes from a law firm market analysis of the energy regulator approval, source 5. Ratesti and the Giurgiu county project are separate developments from Parau 1, included here only to show scale.
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| Parau 1, operating now | 70 |
| Ratesti, planned | 120 |
| Parau 2, financed, under construction | 150 |
| Giurgiu county project, approved by the regulator | 534 |
Romania had already passed 1 gigawatt of utility scale battery capacity before Parau 1 connected, which is why a merchant battery can now make sense there. Econergy has 743 megawatts connected or ready to connect in Romania and another 861 megawatts under construction, including Parau 2, a larger, still building project nearby with a 150 megawatt battery backed by 229 million euros in financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Measured against the wider market, Parau 1 is a small first step. The energy regulator in Romania approved a single storage project in Giurgiu county in February 2026 at 534 megawatts, about 7.6 times the size of the Parau 1 battery, inside a national program already backing at least 2,174 megawatt hours of new standalone battery capacity with a 150 million euro subsidy approved by the European Commission.