Research Article · SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Challenges and Perspectives in the Transmission Planning in Southeast Europe
KSI Transactions on Knowledge Society · Vol. XVII · No. 1 · pp. 31–35 · 2026
Abstract
Transmission planning in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia has to absorb fast growth of renewables and storage, close regional price gaps and fit national plans into EU instruments that are being revised. This paper reviews the latest ten-year plans of the five transmission system operators and the related regulatory decisions, the ENTSO-E regional investment plan for Continental South East, the second Union list of projects of common and mutual interest and the European Grids Package, together with peer reviewed studies. Three groups of challenges stand out. Connection requests exceed what the grids can host; the Bulgarian operator reports that signed contracts have exhausted transfer capacity in all regions. Cross-border projects slip or stall, and Greece remains far below the 15% interconnection target. Permitting, financing and equipment supply can stretch delivery beyond a decade. A framework is proposed that links four planning levels to these challenges and to indicators measured against EU benchmarks.
Keywords: transmission planning, interconnection, projects of common interest, renewable integration, Southeast Europe
Subject classification
How to cite
APA 7 — bibliographic citation based on the published issue
Full text and references
Download the individual article PDF to read the complete methods, results, discussion, conclusions and bibliography. HTML full text and a structured reference list may additionally be provided.
Open article PDF ↗Article history and integrity notices
Published. Any correction, expression of concern or retraction must be displayed here with a dated formal notice. Article history dates should be added only after verification against editorial records.
Display after checking the editorial records.
Display dated notices prominently and link to the formal record if applicable.
Copyright and licence
© 2026 Kiril Anguelov. Published by the Knowledge Society Institute in KSI Transactions on Knowledge Society.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): view licence.
The actual copyright holder and any third-party exceptions must be verified in the editorial record and identified on the live article page and in the article PDF.