Romania's market regulator close to open the door to more spot electricity exchanges

The Romanian market regulator body ANRE is preparing licensing orders, which could allow several electricity market operators (OPEEDs) to manage day-ahead markets (DAM) or intraday markets.

The new secondary legislation proposed by ANRE is the result of the amendments made last year to the Energy Law, which transposed several provisions of some European directives and regulations into the local legislation.

"Starting this year, OPCOM no longer has a monopoly on the electricity sales market," energy minister Virgil Popescu announced recently.

However, the investments needed by developing alternative spot electricity markets are so large that there will not be many interested players, Profit.ro argued.

The new spot market operators will have to achieve coupling with the neighbouring energy markets.

The Romanian Commodity Exchange (BRM) is the most suitable candidate to compete against OPCOM - but the costs could be prohibitive. Another option would be for BRM to organize and manage an uncoupled local spot market, which would involve some lower costs.

According to some reports, the local regulator (ANRE) is currently undecided whether to allow the functioning of uncoupled spot markets. In addition, energy traders would have a solid motivation for supplying energy only in coupled markets, where demand is higher.

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