Shelf prices have not increased because of energy, and someone should take care of this, the vice-president of the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE), Gabriel Andronache, said on Monday at a specialist conference.
According to him, in 2025, after the exit from the capped price scheme, the non-household consumer paid the same price, with the only one affected being the household consumer.
"If we make a connection at the level of the price that the non-household consumers are currently paying, because we are referring to them- and with the challenges of 2025, when we got out of that scheme - I can give you some interesting news: the non-household consumers, when they left the scheme, paid the same price in reality. So, they didn't have more, they didn't even come to the settlement, it was somewhere around RON 1.16 , and then, in July, according to our data and analyses, it was still RON 1.16. The ones affected by the increase were the household consumers, with that low consumption that was up to 300 kilowatts, with those thresholds of 100, 255, 300. So, if we are to think that the prices on the shelf have increased, I can tell you very seriously - and I think that someone should take care of this - it is not because of the energy," Andronache said
He added that, in order to have lower energy prices, Romania needs production and interconnections.
"We looked at the graphs, we saw how it has evolved in the last 10 years, starting from an energy price of EUR 36-39 per megawatt to EUR 108 and we realise that we need production. This is the main goal and the main objective; and interconnections. I looked at the graph and you can see very well how Italy has an even higher price than us, although it has quite a high capacity to import from France. France has a huge production, exports a lot and over 80% of France's exports go directly to Italy, so they go somewhere around 45 terawatts per year, close to Romania's consumption, which is somewhere around 54 terawatts per year. So, in the end, we must have the production where we use it so that it is an attractive price."
In addition, Romania exports energy at peak production, at low prices, and imports in the evening and morning, at peak load, when prices are high.
"It would be best to take a bit of history, to go back a little bit and look at the mix we had 10 years ago and the obligations we had towards the European Union and where we are today. Even if we have an installed capacity that is similar to that in terms of power, we have different yields and, if we look at last year's data, how much we exported, how much we imported, theoretically the difference is not very big. The problem is that we export at the peak of production, where the price is low, and we import in the evening and in the morning, at peak load, where prices are high, and that is why we reach this price, which is still high, given that we want to develop our economy and, for any investor, the price of energy matters a lot."
Andronache added that peak production during the day must be delayed, and the delay can only be done through storage, and at the end of 2025 Romania had a dispatchable storage capacity of almost 600 megawatts.
"Considering that last year, in 2025, the commercial licenses for about 850 megawatts, out of the 1,048 megawatts that we were obliged to withdraw, were withdrawn from operation, so they were modified, we find that there is a certain maturity at the moment in those who are in the production area - and including in the wind and solar production area as well, production capacities with low yields compared to coal, hence a difference. Even if I have the same installed capacity, it's one thing to have a yield of 17% - in 2024, for example, in the solar area, instead of 17 I had a yield of even 15 - and it's another thing to go with coal, where I had a yield of 60%, but the world has developed and has finally understood that that peak of production during the day must be delayed. And the delay can only be done through storage and we found last year that both those who are dispatchable and prosumers had started to install very large storage capacities and we notice that because they come and modify their establishment authorization and add storage capacity. And I can tell you that we closed 2025 on a dispatchable storage capacity close to 600 megawatts, about 593 megawatts in storage," the ANRE official told the 15th edition of ZF Power Summit 2026: Energize the economy.
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