The decision to enter Romania, the 10th country in the Group's expansion plan (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Poland, Irland, UK, Germany) at the European level on this segment, stems from an awareness of the fundamental role that distributed generation solutions (an energy resource used to generate power at or near the point where it is consumed) will play in Romania's energy transition.

Distributed Generation has been a key strategic pillar for Greenvolt Group since its incorporation, and the current geopolitical situation has only presented itself as a catalyst to the entire industry, whereby reducing both the electricity bill cost and volatility came to be of utmost importance and will continue to be as such for the coming years.

"The launch of Greenvolt Next Romania represents a natural step in the growth of the Group’s pan- European self-consumption platform. Leveraging on the experience that Greenvolt already has in the wind and solar utility scale in Romania, we recognize that there’s a strong Renewable Energy Solutions potential in the country, and its ambitious deployment targets make us believe that Romania can be at the forefront of the decentralized energy revolution.” said Joao Manso Neto, CEO Greenvolt Group.

"We know Romania very well. We have about 60 MW of solar power operating and another 24 MW in construction and for wind, we have about 300 MW ready to build", the CEO of Greenvolt Group told Green Start-Up.

He added the country needs to add more power capacity to support its growing industries and that renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar coupled with batteries, could be the ideal power sources for the task.

Greenvolt Next in Romania proposes a new way of generating and consuming electricity through the use of solar panels, by bringing companies to the center of the action while contributing to the energy transition, maximizing energy efficiency, and respecting the environment. The company specializes in the design, construction, management, and maintenance of tailored solutions for photovoltaic systems (roofs, ground, carports), energy efficiency interventions, solar storage, and electric mobility.

Big power plants are not the future

The company brings a new and innovative model to the market that will offer many benefits to the end user. With the model Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), Greenvolt Next allows businesses to do the installation of photovoltaic panels without an initial investment, and at the same time ensure renewable energy at a low and predictable cost for our partners.

The way this works, as per the company's Country Manager for Romania, Filipe Dias, is that a company that chooses to implement Greenvolt's solar panels will sign a Power Purchase Agreement that could last 15 years, for example, and it will pay a monthly fee based on how much energy was generated. So, if for example a company has generated 1 MW of power during one month, it will pay Greenvolt the equivalent in generated energy at a fixed price.

After the PPA contract's period has expired, the company can keep using the solar panels to continue generating energy for free.

He also believes that solar power is the one that will have the biggest benefit for the companies, as "it's the cheapest energy in the world, I think solar will be the main player in every country. The big power plants are not the future anymore, you can't build a huge power plant somewhere and then distribute all the energy for the entire country, there are a lot of costs associated with that."

Greenvolt's vision is that on-site energy production and consumption will be the future and solar panels coupled with storage solutions, such as batteries, is the ideal combination for this goal.

The concept of energy communities is another that the company strongly believes in, as in Portugal, there are already renewable power projects implemented by Greenvolt that don't benefit just the building they are installed on, but also neighboring sites.

"One of our hospitals in Lisbon is receiving solar power from a nearby stadium and we will try to do the same thing in Romania, as well", Filipe explained.

In the PPA (power purchase agreement), Filipe told us, Greenvolt covers everything, from installing to maintaining the solar installation, meaning that the recipient is covered in case of an emergency.

In the next three years, the company is committed to installing 110MW of renewable energy in the Distributed Generation segment only, representing an overall investment of 27 million euros. Consequently, the company aims to create 100 direct and indirect jobs, through this innovative model.

The Greenvolt Group entered the country in 2021 through Greenvolt Power, focused on Utility Scale Wind, Solar and Energy Storage projects. With a pipeline that includes 302MW and 75MW in Wind and Solar, respectively, and an active development of batteries globally, Greenvolt Power is one of the main players in the European market, having won the Polish capacity auction and being awarded 1.2GW of capacity for six Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) projects.

Amazon, IKEA and Pepsi are some of the companies Greenvolt collaborated with on installing solar panels.