The existence of a regional energy exchange did not influence the price on the domestic market, says a consistent part of suppliers. Among active energy traders there is the view that a regional exchange led to a decrease in trading prices in our spot market in December.
Instead, most operators say that influences have come not from the region, but from local factors: “Price falls, traditionally, in December, because of the holiday season, when most businesses are closed, and energy demand is therefore, smaller”.
Market sources say that the only significant change brought by the functioning of a regional energy exchange is increasing the price difference between peak load and low load.
“In times of low load, energy has become cheaper, being imported at a low price from Hungary. Overall, however, there are no major effects as export capacity was contracted before the inauguration of the exchange and was used at full capacity.”
Ion Lungu, president of the Association of Electricity Suppliers in Romania (AFEER) said that, so far, there are no notable influences in our market coming from regional transactions, considering that the price on the spot market in December fell amid the domestic consumer behavior. “In the region, the market went relatively the same in the last two months”, he added.
According to an OPCOM report, the average DAM price in December was 178.99 lei/MWh, down by roughly 9% compared to November 2014. Last year, the average price of electricity traded daily on OPCOM was 153.6 lei MWh, down nearly 2% from the average of 2013.
The establishment of regional energy exchange by Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia assume that these four countries will come to have a single price for electricity traded on spot markets. Until then, the energy flows between these countries have influence on national markets. Regional energy exchange began operating on 19th of November 2014.
The energy produced in our country has been, in recent years, under the price level of the partner states in the regional market project, so there is a risk of higher energy prices for Romanian consumers after regional trading of the available quantities in the four states.
The crisis has severely reduced the price differences between the countries of our region, according to traders, and our authorities do not expect significant price increases or discounts for quantities of energy traded in our country.
In the market coupling mechanism, energy “flows” from the country that has the lowest prices towards the one with the highest rates, the matching of offers being made by market operators. Each country maintains its national spot exchanges. Then, depending on available transmission capacity between countries, there are new transactions made. Romania does this matching with Hungary. Transactions are made hourly, based also on the available transport capacity.