Romania ponders temporarily capping electricity prices on balancing market

To address the spike in electricity prices on the balancing market, Romania’s Government drafted a set of measures to be considered for implementation, including the legislation for a mechanism for temporarily (three to six months) capping the prices on this specific market, Ziarul Financiar reported.

The measures were drafted after consultations with the market regulator ANRE, grid operator Transelectrica, and market operator OPCOM.

Increasing the transparency of the balancing market is another measure envisaged.

The prices in Romania’s balancing market reached values as high as RON 16,000 (EUR 3,200) per MWh in recent weeks as the intermittent renewable green power generation capacities are increasing their share in total production. The power traders are believed to speculate the limited resources for balancing services (Hidroelectrica and the gas-fired plants mainly).

In this context, the opposition USR party accused the ruling coalition of blocking their draft bill on encouraging investments in storage capacities.

The USR project proposes the exemption from the payment of transport and distribution tariffs, green certificates, and cogeneration contributions for the energy extracted from the network to be stored for the purpose of balancing the network.

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