Bulgaria officially launched the largest operational battery energy storage system (BESS) currently in the EU. Located in the Balkan Industrial Park in the north-central city of Lovech, the facility has a capacity of 124 megawatts (MW)/496.2 megawatt hours, consisting of 111 energy storage containers. The project was inaugurated by Bulgaria's Minister of Energy, Zhecho Stankov, marking the first step towards Bulgaria's goal of deploying 10,000 megawatt hours of battery energy storage capacity within a year. Previously, the country had awarded nearly 9,713 megawatt hours of projects in an energy storage tender. The energy storage system was developed by Advance Green Energy AD, a company owned by Bulgarian entrepreneurs Kiril Domuschiev and Georgi Domuschiev. With strong support from the local government, the project was completed in just six months. This project also broke the domestic record previously held by a 25 MW/55 megawatt hour energy storage system that was commissioned last year.