Croatia's first large standalone battery on its transmission grid runs on Tesla Megapacks. BESS Šibenik, with 60 MW of power and 120 MWh of storage at the IMPOL-TLM industrial complex on the Dalmatian coast, was officially inaugurated on 4 November 2026, Balkan Green Energy News and ESS News report. Both name Tesla Megapack XL units, connected to the 110 kV grid, as the storage hardware.
The project
| BESS Šibenik | |
|---|---|
| Power and capacity | 60 MW, 120 MWh (two hours) |
| Storage units | Tesla Megapack XL |
| Grid connection | 110 kV transmission grid |
| Investment | about €60 million |
| First phase | 10 MW / 20 MWh, earning on the market since January 2026 |
| Grid service | frequency restoration reserve for the operator HOPS, since September 2026 |
| Inauguration | 4 November 2026 |
The battery belongs to a Croatian investment platform set up by IE-Energy together with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Raiffeisen's Croatian pension funds. Slovenia's NGEN was the main engineering, procurement and construction contractor and the technology partner. It also developed the control software, which monitors market and grid conditions and optimises how the battery is used. Photos of the site appear to show power conversion equipment from Sinexcel, ESS News notes. Neither report gives the number of Megapack units.
Who paid, and how it earns
The EBRD put in €16.8 million of equity, its first equity investment in a standalone, commercially operated battery, and the Raiffeisen pension funds matched it. The second phase is entitled to a €19.8 million grant from the EU's Modernisation Fund, but lower capital costs mean the owners expect to draw only about €15 million.
The battery has no guaranteed income. With its full capacity it provides automatic frequency restoration reserve to the Croatian transmission system operator HOPS, the balancing service that corrects real-time gaps between generation and demand, and it earns only as much as the market pays for that flexibility. NGEN says the owners and investors carry the market risk in full. Its stated job is to help the grid absorb a rising share of solar and wind power.
Where it fits
Šibenik joins a run of Megapack projects across Europe this autumn: Bulgaria's first Megapack park at Tvarditsa, 106 Megapacks at a former coal plant in Belgium and 3 GWh planned in Italy. At 120 MWh it is smaller than those, but it is the first battery of its size on Croatia's grid, and it has already been trading for months rather than waiting for its first contract.
NGEN says it plans more storage projects in Croatia and across Central and South-Eastern Europe. In September it commissioned an 85 MW / 170 MWh system in Austria; the reports do not say whose batteries that one uses.