Romania’s energy regulator ANRE has published a third version of proposed rules aimed at making electricity sharing, supply, balancing and billing work in practice. The consultation runs until Oct. 16. The draft focuses on how energy communities procure and supply electricity when generation does not match member demand.
Residual supplier versus single-supplier structures
The largest change in the draft is the proposed separation between a residual supplier and a single supplier. Under the residual model, members receive part of their electricity through the energy community and buy only the remaining volume needed from the grid from their chosen supplier. The alternative is a single-supplier structure that covers the member’s entire electricity demand.
The draft also allows an energy community to become its own supplier if it obtains the required electricity-supply licence. This would move Romania’s energy-community model beyond shared generation. It also creates a retail market dynamic in which community operators, established suppliers and specialist energy-service companies compete over procurement, balancing, billing and member relationships.
Procurement needs driven by settlement-period mismatches
The draft describes how communities containing households, municipal buildings or small businesses rarely produce exactly the electricity their members consume in every settlement period. Generation can exceed demand at times, while members may require substantial electricity from wider market supply at other times. Managing that difference creates a continuing procurement requirement.
Under the residual-supplier approach, the community can retain control of internally produced electricity while an external retailer fills the gap. This structure is designed to allow existing electricity suppliers to participate without taking over the entire community structure. The single-supplier model instead allows one company to manage both community electricity and external procurement as one bundled product.
Balancing, forecasting and potential service expansion
The single-supplier structure could bundle shared generation, market purchases, balancing and customer billing into one offering. The draft notes that large retailers could benefit because they already have electricity-procurement systems, balancing capabilities and billing infrastructure. It also indicates that an alternative competitor could emerge under the same framework.
An energy community with sufficient scale could obtain a supply licence and operate as its own retail-energy company. In that case, the community’s value would extend beyond ownership of renewable generation and it would control the customer relationship. The draft links that setup to additional services including demand response, storage optimisation, dynamic tariffs and aggregation.
Digital allocation roles for distribution operators
The draft describes how a community with several hundred customers and granular consumption data could manage electricity as a portfolio over time. It outlines an allocation sequence in which solar electricity is allocated first to participating members, with storage absorbing part of surplus generation and flexible loads shifted toward periods of higher community production. Only the remaining requirement would be purchased from the market.
It also sets out that suppliers would need to forecast both consumption and community generation, manage imbalances and determine how much electricity must be sourced externally. Better forecasting and optimisation are described as reducing exposure to potentially expensive market purchases. The draft further states that community-management platforms would coordinate metering data, allocation algorithms, contracts, settlement and billing across multiple customers.
Romania’s distribution operators are assigned a central role because they must determine and validate quantities of shared electricity allocated to individual consumption points. Under the proposed timetable, distribution operators would have until Dec. 31, 2026 to implement IT functionality required for shared-energy allocation. The draft says communities cannot operate efficiently if generation and consumption data cannot be allocated accurately across members for each settlement period.
Municipal renewable projects and implementation timeline
The emerging model is described as creating a service chain involving distribution operators, electricity retailers, community managers, software providers, aggregators and balancing-responsible parties. It also indicates potential changes for municipalities developing local renewable projects such as solar generation for schools, public buildings and local residents. In that scenario, municipalities would not need to view projects solely as electricity production.
The draft states that the community itself could become an energy-services platform managing supply across multiple public and private customers. For investors, it points to recurring revenue elements including generation income from owning solar panels and additional revenue streams from operating the community relationship such as supply margins, administration fees, optimisation services and potentially flexibility revenues. ANRE says the model remains under consultation and final rules could change before adoption.