Groundbreaking in Tvarditsa: Bulgaria builds 300 MWh battery park with Tesla technology

Construction of a large battery storage facility began on Tuesday in Tvarditsa in the Sliven region. The groundbreaking was attended by Prime Minister Rumen Radev, Innovation Minister Ivan Vasilev, Energy Minister Iva Petrova and representatives of the investors and of Tesla. The system is to store electricity for five hours and have a capacity of 300 megawatt hours. It will use 80 Tesla Megapack 2XL units and 20 transformers rated at 4.4 MVA each. According to the BTA news agency, the project is part of an investment programme to modernise energy infrastructure worth more than 350 million euros.

Tvarditsa is the first of three planned storage systems being developed jointly by Asarel-Trade, Power Profit and Tesla. Together they are to store more than 2,300 megawatt hours. "Whoever succeeds in building the capacity for reliable, sustainable energy storage holds the key to the future," Radev said, according to BTA. He said that, relative to the size of its power system, Bulgaria already holds a leading position in Europe in battery storage capacity. Petrova said storage systems totalling more than 6 gigawatts had been implemented in Bulgaria in less than a year and a half. The Asarel-Trade manager said he was confident the project would be completed on time.