Fortis Energy’s Nocaj project in Serbia combines 270 MWp of solar capacity with 72 MWh of battery energy storage and has reached ready-to-build status. Commercial operation is targeted for the second quarter of 2028. The project illustrates how storage could support corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) based on shaped delivery profiles rather than simply volumes of solar production.
Battery storage can shift some midday solar generation into higher-value hours, reduce imbalance and exposure to negative-price hours, and smooth changes in output. It can also help match supply to an industrial buyer’s consumption pattern or evening load. Such flexibility could allow renewable supply to be structured more closely around industrial demand.
At Nocaj, however, the 72 MWh battery can shift only a fraction of the 270 MWp plant’s daily output. The storage does not make the solar facility dispatchable in the same way as a thermal unit, so shaping supply remains limited by the plant’s generation and the battery’s capacity.
Serbian industrial buyers using fixed-volume or pay-as-produced PPAs remain exposed to residual purchases from the market. A shaped renewable supply product could reduce that exposure and potentially support stronger credit quality in the offtake structure. It could also help exporters obtain more traceable low-carbon electricity without taking on the full intermittency of solar production.
Fortis Energy’s Serbian portfolio also includes Fortis Green, a separate 30 MWp solar project. Its commercial operation is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2027, before Nocaj’s planned start in 2028.
PPAs would need to specify how battery capacity is allocated between the buyer and merchant markets, how battery degradation is treated, and who is responsible for balancing. Contract terms would also need to cover prolonged periods of low renewable generation. Those provisions would define how much flexibility is committed to the buyer and how much may be sold into merchant markets.
Storage could move Serbian renewable PPAs from pay-as-produced energy towards shaped industrial supply. A shaped product would need to be transparent about the limits of storage-based delivery while monetising the flexibility premium, rather than presenting a solar-plus-storage plant as fully dispatchable.