Greece: Solar producers ask EU to review repowering and battery bond rules

A group of Greek solar generators has sent two formal complaints to the European Commission, challenging Greece’s policies on repowering ageing renewables and on standalone battery storage permitting and guarantees. The effort was coordinated by Pospief, a Thessaloniki-based association of Greek solar producers.

Complaint 1: Repowering rules for older PV and wind projects. Pospief argues that Greece’s framework for “radical renewal” effectively forces repowered renewable plants to operate only in the market and bars them from operating support for the full lifetime of the new assets. As Pospief General Secretary Petros Tsikouras put it,

renewable and high-efficiency CHP stations undergoing radical renewal from Oct. 31, 2024 must participate exclusively in the market and cannot receive operating support.

The association says the policy also triggers full new permitting, new grid-connection offers, and new bank guarantee submissions—even when repowering is meant to restore damaged projects (including PV systems hit by recent natural disasters) or upgrade hardware like panels and inverters to improve output. 214 solar producers signed this complaint, backed by Pospief. Pospief claims the approach conflicts with EU expectations for fast, simplified, proportionate repowering, wastes existing infrastructure, and treats upgrading investors unfairly.

Complaint 2: Battery storage program and high-performance bonds. The second letter targets Greece’s 4.7 GW program for new utility-scale, front-of-the-meter, standalone batteries, published in March in the State Gazette. The program includes 3.8 GW slated for the transmission network and 900 MW for the distribution network. Projects above 10 MW must apply to the transmission system operator, while smaller projects apply to the distribution operator.

Pospief and 229 signatories object to the required performance bonds:

• €200,000/MW for transmission-connected projects

• €50,000/MW for distribution-connected projects

They argue these levels are out of line with other EU markets, where bonds “rarely exceed” €10,000/MW, and warn the high guarantees could price out smaller developers and concentrate the storage market among large firms.

Tsikouras also linked the storage issue to rising curtailment. He said Greece curtailed about 1.85 TWh of renewable electricity in 2025, with solar taking the largest share because curtailments mainly happen between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. He added curtailment this year rose tenfold versus last year, and warned that in 2026 Greece could be forced to curtail 20 times more green power than it did in 2024, undermining project revenues and loan repayment.

Despite the policy push, no large-scale battery projects have been connected to Greece’s grid so far. Tsikouras noted a separate 900 MW tender for standalone storage has delivered around 300 MW of installed capacity, but those systems remain unconnected. Pospief is urging Greece to lower bond requirements to broaden participation and speed up storage deployment.