The Energy Agency of the Republic of Serbia, AERS, is completing consultation on rules for supplier and aggregator switching, with the consultation closing on Sept. 30. The draft addresses aggregator changes even when a customer already has a full electricity-supply contract. The development is linked to how independent aggregation could operate alongside existing supply arrangements.
Independent aggregation and supplier switching framework
Serbia’s Energy Law defines an independent aggregator as an aggregator not connected with a customer’s electricity supplier. It allows aggregators to participate in electricity markets without consent from other market participants. The law also protects customers using independent aggregators from unjustified charges, penalties, or contractual restrictions imposed by suppliers.
AERS’ switching framework is intended to turn those legal rights into an operational model for customers. Under the emerging approach, an industrial company could continue purchasing electricity from its existing supplier while contracting another company to manage flexible loads. This structure separates energy procurement and billing from flexibility management.
Flexible load portfolios and market participation
The model envisages aggregators combining controllable equipment across multiple customers and offering the resulting portfolio into markets where flexibility has value. Resources described in the framework extend beyond conventional generation. They include industrial refrigeration, water pumping, furnaces, electric boilers, HVAC systems, cold storage, onsite generation, and eventually commercial EV fleets.
The approach creates two electricity relationships: the supplier handles procurement and billing, while the aggregator manages flexibility. For Serbian industrial consumers, the distinction could allow equipment already installed inside factories to generate additional revenue without requiring customers to become electricity traders. A plant capable of reducing 2 MW for a limited period is cited as an example where individual trading may be less practical than portfolio participation.
Scale is described as central because individual loads may be too small or unpredictable to trade efficiently. Aggregation converts multiple loads into a virtual resource that can be forecast, dispatched, and measured as one portfolio. The aggregator’s value is tied to contracts, software, telemetry, forecasting, and market access rather than ownership of physical assets.
Balancing responsibility and metering requirements
The framework could broaden participation in Serbia’s electricity sector by enabling specialised aggregators, energy-service companies, technology providers, and existing suppliers to develop separate flexibility businesses. It may also intensify competition for industrial customers by adding a commercial dimension beyond commodity pricing, contract structure, and balancing conditions. In that context, suppliers could offer energy plus flexibility optimisation while independent aggregators could pursue separation of services as part of their proposition.
Several elements still need to develop before independent aggregation becomes liquid. Metering, baseline calculation, verification, balancing responsibility, data access, and technical requirements for individual market products are identified as factors determining how aggregated demand can participate. The Energy Law already places balancing responsibility on aggregators for deviations they cause.
Because aggregation cannot function commercially if flexibility is not measurable in delivery terms, the emerging market requires increasingly granular metering and automated control. For larger industrial consumers, the process could connect with energy-management systems used to monitor production, electricity costs, and onsite generation. Over time, the aggregator could act as an interface between internal systems and external electricity markets.
Customer choice on flexibility providers
The AERS switching framework is described as not creating the independent-aggregation market immediately. It addresses a basic commercial question for independent aggregation: whether a customer can change its flexibility provider without changing the company supplying its electricity. As that separation becomes operational, Serbia moves toward a setup where electricity consumption can be contracted, aggregated, and traded as a separate energy service.