Cernavodă nuclear reactor restart eases Romania’s short-term power price spikes

The return to service of Unit 1 at Romania's Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant has eased pressure on the country's short-term electricity market, reducing evening import needs and significantly lowering spot power prices after around 40 days of planned maintenance, Economedia.ro reported.

The 700 MW reactor was reconnected to the national grid last weekend after a scheduled outage that had removed one of Romania's largest sources of baseload generation from the system.

During the shutdown, Romania relied heavily on electricity imports during evening peak demand, when solar generation falls to zero, and household and industrial consumption remains high. Cross-border imports exceeded 3,000 MW at times, accounting for about 40% of domestic consumption.

The resulting supply imbalance pushed prices on the OPCOM day-ahead market to as high as EUR 1,000 per MWh during evening peak hours, with imported electricity further affected by regional supply shortages and transmission congestion costs.

Since Unit 1 resumed operations, import requirements have fallen markedly. During the latest evening peak, Romania imported around 2,000 MW of electricity, about one-third less than a week earlier, as the nuclear reactor supplied a stable domestic source of generation.

The improvement has also been reflected in wholesale electricity prices. Evening prices on the OPCOM market have declined to around EUR 180-200 per MWh, five times lower compared to those recorded during the reactor's outage.

Nuclearelectrica, the operator of the Cernavodă plant, announced on July 5 that Unit 1 had been successfully reconnected to the national electricity system following the completion of its planned maintenance programme.

(Photo source: Nuclearelectrica.ro)