Solmar Insights
Greenvolt Power has secured a €218 million ($254 million) project financing package from UniCredit to develop two of Poland’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities. Located in Ełk and Turośń, the projects will provide a combined 400MW of capacity and 1.6GWh of storage, aiming to strengthen grid stability and support renewable energy integration in the region.
Key figures
€218m UniCredit financing package
400MW/1.6GWh combined BESS capacity
$178m (€153m) in bridge facilities
Turośń BESS inaugurated July 2026
The financing structure
The deal, led by UniCredit, consists of €153 million in bridge financing and a €65 million guarantee facility to cover project costs at both storage sites. This blend of lending and guarantee components reflects a tailored approach to address construction and operational risks typical of utility-scale storage developments. By combining a temporary bridge facility with a longer-term guarantee, Greenvolt ensures capital availability through development milestones and lender security on project performance.
Greenvolt Power’s director of M&A and project finance, Adrian Góralski, cited UniCredit’s longstanding role providing debt for the company’s renewables and storage ventures in Central and Eastern Europe. The institutions’ history, including ventures in Poland, Romania, and Hungary, allows for financing of increasingly complex storage portfolios amid expanding grid needs.
UniCredit managing director for CEE infrastructure finance, Lazar Nikolic, highlighted the significance of backing 400MW BESS capacity to accelerate the regional green transition, noting this transaction reinforces UniCredit’s view of BESS as a bankable infrastructure asset class in Poland and broader CEE markets.
Project scale and operational timeline
The Ełk and Turośń facilities each provide 200MW of power and 800MWh of storage, positioning these sites among the largest BESS assets in Poland to date. Their collective 400MW/1.6GWh footprint aims to address grid flexibility demands as renewable penetration rises within the Polish power sector.
Turośń Kościelna reached official inauguration in July 2026, signaling operational readiness, while Ełk is set to commence commercial operations in the fourth quarter of 2026. The staggered timeline enables Greenvolt to demonstrate on-time delivery and performance, drawing further lender confidence for subsequent large-scale grid projects.
The facilities are located in north-eastern Poland, chosen for their proximity to regions experiencing rapid renewable buildouts and rising system imbalances. As Poland’s renewable mix grows, BESS projects like these offer grid operators greater control over peak management, balancing services, and frequency regulation.
Strategic goals and sector implications
Greenvolt Power’s investment in large-scale storage underscores BESS technology’s emerging strategic role in Europe’s energy transition. The two projects aim to enhance system reliability, support renewable energy integration, and reinforce national energy security goals for Poland, key selling points for access to infrastructure debt in today’s market.
For lenders, the transaction marks a maturation of battery storage as an asset class. The scale and structure of UniCredit’s funding package signals increasing lender willingness to provide financial backing to storage-only projects outside established renewables like wind and solar, particularly when coupled with experienced development sponsors and proven offtake structures.
The Polish market, and the Central and Eastern European region more broadly, is witnessing a catch-up in grid-scale storage investment after years of lag behind Western counterparts. Growing pipeline visibility and support from the international finance community are critical for developers seeking to meet capacity market deadlines and grid balancing targets in the 2026 to 2028 window.
Context within Greenvolt’s portfolio
This latest credit package follows Greenvolt’s earlier €348 million financing for a 253.1MW wind project in Ialomița County, Romania, cementing the company’s strategy of scaling generation and storage assets across Central and Eastern Europe. The diversified portfolio approach, combining renewables development with advanced BESS, lowers merchant risk exposure and increases eligibility for capacity and ancillary service revenues.
UniCredit’s engagement with Greenvolt across multiple technologies and markets illustrates broadening bank appetite for pan-European energy transition projects. Repeat lender-borrower relationships can streamline underwriting timelines, which is increasingly important as developers race to secure grid connection agreements and favorable market entry slots.
The relationship also demonstrates how institutional lenders are adjusting credit strategies to prioritize decarbonization and digital flexibility, traits that grid operators and policymakers flag as necessary for longer-term market stability. For developers, this bolsters confidence to underwrite larger, more complex multisite portfolios.
Market signals for institutional buyers
The project’s size and the scale of backing provide an important data point for US-based institutional buyers and developers tracking global BESS bankability trends. With BESS capacity in the hundreds of megawatts now considered investable by leading European infrastructure lenders, project sponsors in the US may leverage this precedent to secure funding for domestic large-scale storage developments.
Furthermore, the structure, using a blend of bridge and guarantee facilities, mirrors financial approaches becoming more common in North America for storage, renewables, and hybrid assets attempting to close capital gaps through construction to operation. The rapid execution of these deals, backed by international capital, indicates intensifying cross-border competition for grid-scale storage projects and could impact pricing, lender due diligence, and risk allocation mechanisms in comparable US markets such as ERCOT, PJM, and CAISO.
As more institutional capital looks toward bankable storage projects in Europe and the US, developers should anticipate a continued evolution of deal structures, with a need for proven delivery and operational capability to attract lender support at similar scales.
What this means for buyers
Power and storage assets in Central and Eastern Europe saw a €218m financing event that confirms mainstream bankability for 400MW/1.6GWh BESS deals. This signals that lenders are increasingly prepared to back BESS as a standalone infrastructure asset for projects of this scale. Buyers can cite this precedent with lenders and institutional investors to justify pursuit of similarly structured debt packages for large-scale storage portfolios this quarter.
Reporting via the original publisher
