Romanian Electricity Market
Adresa
Piaţa Charles de Gaulle, Nr. 15
Etaj 4
Bucureşti, Sector 1
Telefon
+40-21-306.12.31/33
Fax
+40-21-230.06.84
Website
www.rciro.ro
General considerations
The year 2000 constituted an important milestone of the Romanian power sector development, portrayed by the restructuring of the entire sector in line with EU Competition Directives. Romania implemented the liberalized European market model characterized by a high degree of competitiveness. Subsequently, the Romanian Electricity and Heat Regulatory Authority issued secondary legislation (new Commercial Code and related procedures for market operation).
The new electricity law and the national energetic strategy, both adopted in 2007, are boosting trade centralization, enabling transparency, liquidity and monitoring. The analysis of the preliminary 2008 results confirms an increase of interest for the centralized markets for bilateral contracts (CMBC). Correlated with the interest expressed by major players from neighbouring countries for the development of similar markets, OPCOM has acted towards market liberalization and diversification, both in Romania and at regional level.
Main players
ANRE - Romania's Energy Regulatory Authority
ANRE is a public and independent body having the mission of creating and implementing the appropriate regulatory system to ensure the proper functioning of the electricity, heat and gas markets, in terms of efficiency, competition, transparency and consumer protection.
Transelectrica - Transmission System Operator (TSO)
The TSO is responsible for the operation of the transmission system, including management of electricity market and interconnection with the neighboring power systems. Romanian TSO is a member of UCTE (Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity) since May 2003 and ETSO (European Transmission System Operators) since November 2004.
Transelectrica provides directly and through its subsidiaries the following services:
- in its capacity of TSO, Transelectrica is responsible for (i) the management of the grid and dispatching infrastructure, (ii) capacity allocation on interconnections, and (iii) green certificates allocation;
- as Balancing Market Operator Transelectrica is in charge of operation of the balancing market platform;
- as Commercial Operator of the electricity market through OPCOM, its subsidiary, Transelectrica is operating the electricity and gree certificates trading platforms;
- as Metering operator of the wholesale electricity market through its subsidiary OMEPA, Transelectrica operates the metering system;
- as Telecommunication and IT operator, through its subsidiary TELETRANS, Transelectrica operates an optic fiber and digital telecom system.
On the generation side, the key players are Nuclearelectrica, three energy complexes (Rovinari, Turceni and Craiova), Termoelectrica, Hidroelectrica and Electrocentrale (Bucuresti, Deva and Galati).
Nuclearelectrica
The producer of nuclear-generated electricity and nuclear fuel, Nuclearelectrica, is majority owned (90.28%) by Romanian state through the Ministry of Economy. The restitution fund, Fondul Proprietatea, owns 9.72% of shares. In November 2008, Nuclearelectrica signed an investment agreement for setting up a Joint Venture company for the commissioning and operation of reactors 3 and 4, each with an installed capacity of 720 MW. The joint venture includes six selected partners, namely Arcelor Mittal, CEZ, Electrabel, Enel, Iberdrola and RWE Power. The new reactors are expected to be comissioned by 2015.
Energy complexes
Romania has three energy complexes (namely Rovinari, Turceni and Craiova) with a total gross installed capacity of 3900 MW. The production of energy is based on lignite. Although some investment were made for the modernization of all three producers, to comply with EU regulations several hundreds million of EUR are to be still invested.
