The government said that competition has been launched in light of the the need to optimise and manage the electricity grid in Portugal in a more flexible way. Power generation capacity is around 22GW.

Minister of Environment and Energy Maria da Graça Carvalho said: “This is a significant step towards Portugal’s energy independence and towards building a greener and more sustainable energy future. Energy storage plays a crucial role in the modernisation of our electrical infrastructure, enabling more effective management of resources and a more agile response to fluctuations in supply and demand, thus benefiting the economy and the environment.”

The deadline for applications is 2 September and they must be submitted on the Environmental Fund portal. The funding is part of the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a pot of money aimed at helping EU economies transform structurally after the Covid-19 pandemic, and which several have used to fund energy storage.

Grid-scale BESS projects have been relatively limited in Portugal to date, although utility Iberdrola did bring online a huge, 40GWh pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) project there in 2022.

On the mainland, independent power producer (IPP) Galp is deploying a 5MW/20MWh project with system integrator Powin, peer Greenvolt has built a 5MW/5MWh system at a biomass plant, while system integrator Fluence has deployed similar-sized projects on the islands of Madeira and Terceira.