Mrs. Miglena Stoilova, the Chairperson of BGWEA, was a speaker at the biggest regional event dedicated to corporate renewable energy sourcing in Southeast Europe.- RE-Source Southeast 2023.
In the panel “Corporate procurement of renewable energy from a regional perspective” Mrs. Stoilova said that Bulgaria is in a favorable position to have good wind and solar potential that allows the country to build an optimal well-balanced mix of the two technologies. That, along with the hydro capacities of the country, and the addition of not-so-high storage capacity, would guarantee a high level of baseload renewable energy.
Unfortunately, Bulgaria faced political instability in the last couple of years and therefore has not managed to make the needed changes to its legislation that would allow for accelerated permitting procedure, nor has even dealt with the legislative and regulatory deficiencies to streamline the permitting process and provide certainty in the process to investors.
Another major bottleneck is the lack of interconnection capacity in the areas with wind potential. To allow for the interconnection of wind capacity, she believes that TSO shall:
- consider early on in their development process the wind projects in its 10-year development plan for the transmission grid.
- apply for benefiting from the available EU funds for the needed investments in grid capacity rehabilitation and expansion in the regions where wind projects are developed.”
