Poland's Gryfino battery tender shows how state buyers can shut out Chinese bids

What happened

PGE has broken ground on its Gryfino battery project south of Szczecin. SPEC BAU Polska and El Professional are building it on a turnkey basis, Fluence is supplying 94 Smartstack units, and commercial operation is planned for 2028.¹

Why it matters for CEE

The tender behind it showed how Polish public buyers can keep Chinese technology out. PGE rejected an offer from Elektrotim and China's Jiangsu Linyang Energy Storage because the supplier's home country is not party to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or a similar deal guaranteeing reciprocal market access. The winning consortium bid PLN 1.142 billion gross, against PLN 1.162 billion for the excluded offer, and the project has 17 years of guaranteed capacity market revenue.² Since 9 September 2025, Polish procurement law admits contractors from such third countries only if the contracting authority explicitly allows it, following the EU Court of Justice's Kolin and Qingdao rulings.³

At Gryfino the exclusion did not cost PGE on price, since the rejected bid was the more expensive one. For other state-owned buyers in the region, the Polish rule suggests that whether Chinese suppliers can compete now depends largely on how each tender is written.

What to watch

Whether PGE's next storage tenders state that third-country bidders are admitted – under Polish law, silence now means they are not.³