This weekend, Romania recorded negative electricity prices on the day-ahead market, and negative prices of 2,000 euros per MWh were reached in the balancing market, Virgiliu Ivan, director of DEN CNTEE Transelectrica, said on Thursday at Solar Energy Bucharest Summit.

“Currently, Romania’s export-import capacity is somewhere of around 3,000-3,500 megawatts in periods when the network is complete. In the period with withdrawals from operation, this drops to somewhere around 2,500 (MWh). But through the investments we are making in the next period we have the obligation to reach over 5,000 megawatts of export and import capacity at the end of 2025. There are and will be large capacities and they will increase until 2030, along with the development of the electric transmission network, both in Romania, but also within the operators with whom we operate interconnected. So why do we need consumption? Well, it is the basis. Consumers are the ones who pay and look at what happened last weekend. It is the first weekend that the prices on DAM in Romania were negative. In the balancing market that we administer, negative prices of 2,000 euros per Megawatt-hour were reached. This means that who had a surplus during those hours on the weekend, in addition to the fact that purchased the energy at market prices, will pay in the settlement stage very, very high prices. That’s why consumption is needed and there is also another element, another facet, which we know less about, which is our responsibility, the defense and restoration part of a system,” declared Virgiliu Ivan, according to Agerpres.

He stated that during this period special attention must be paid to energy storage, noting that it is the key to the integration of renewable power plants into the system.