Romania is reshaping the commercial framework for energy communities, potentially creating a new segment of the electricity retail market in which communities can choose between purchasing only their residual electricity needs from an external supplier or placing their entire consumption with a single supplier.
The energy regulator ANRE has published a third version of its proposed rules designed to establish a practical framework for electricity sharing, supply, balancing and billing. The consultation process is open until Oct. 16.
The main proposed change is the distinction between a residual supplier model and a single-supplier model. Under the residual approach, members would receive part of their electricity through the energy community and purchase only the remaining volume required from the grid through a supplier of their choice.
Under the alternative structure, one supplier would be responsible for meeting the member’s entire electricity demand, including electricity not covered by community generation.
Importantly, an energy community could itself become the supplier if it obtains the required electricity-supply licence. This would take Romania’s energy-community model beyond the simple sharing of locally generated renewable electricity and potentially turn community operators into direct participants in the retail market.
The commercial opportunity could therefore extend well beyond allocating rooftop solar generation among neighbouring consumers. Communities that include households, municipal buildings or small businesses will rarely produce exactly the amount of electricity their members consume in every settlement period. Surplus generation will occur at some times, while additional electricity will be needed from the wider market at others.
Managing that difference creates an ongoing procurement and balancing requirement. Under the residual-supplier model, a community could retain control over its internally generated electricity while relying on an external retailer to cover the remaining demand. This would allow established suppliers to participate without taking over the entire community structure.
The single-supplier model offers a more integrated approach. A single company could manage community generation, external procurement, balancing and customer billing as one service. Large electricity retailers could have an advantage because they already operate procurement systems, balancing arrangements and billing infrastructure.
At the same time, the proposed framework could create room for energy communities themselves to become retail-energy operators. A sufficiently large community that obtains a supply licence could control not only renewable generation but also the customer relationship and electricity procurement process.
That could open the door to additional services such as demand response, storage optimisation, dynamic tariffs and aggregation. A community with several hundred customers and detailed consumption data could eventually manage electricity demand and generation as a coordinated portfolio.
Solar generation could first be allocated to participating members, while batteries could absorb part of any surplus. Flexible consumption could be shifted towards periods of high community production, with only the remaining electricity requirement purchased from the market.
This would make the supplier’s role increasingly sophisticated. Suppliers and community operators would need to forecast both electricity consumption and community generation, manage imbalances and determine how much electricity must be purchased externally. Better forecasting and optimisation could reduce exposure to costly market purchases.
The emerging model could also create opportunities for software companies and energy-service providers. Community-management platforms will need to coordinate metering data, electricity allocation, contracts, settlement and billing across multiple consumption points.
Distribution operators will play a central role as well, since they must determine and validate the quantities of shared electricity allocated to individual customers. Under the proposed timetable, distribution operators would have until Dec. 31, 2026, to implement the IT functionality required for shared-energy allocation.
This makes digital infrastructure one of the immediate challenges for the development of energy communities. Efficient operation will depend on the accurate allocation of generation and consumption data across participating customers during each settlement period.
The proposed framework could consequently create a broader service ecosystem involving distribution operators, electricity suppliers, community managers, software providers, aggregators and balancing-responsible parties.
The model could also influence how municipalities structure local renewable-energy projects. A municipality developing solar capacity for schools, public buildings and local residents could treat the project not simply as a generation asset but as an energy-services platform serving multiple public and private customers.
For investors and operators, this creates the possibility of recurring revenues beyond electricity generation. Solar assets can generate income from power production, while community operators could potentially earn supply margins, administration fees, optimisation revenues and income from flexibility services.
The framework remains under consultation, and the final ANRE rules may change before adoption. Nevertheless, the proposed structure indicates a significant shift in the role of Romanian energy communities.
Rather than functioning solely as mechanisms for sharing locally produced electricity, they could become active participants in the competitive retail market, with the ability to manage procurement, balancing and customer relationships.
The emerging competition may therefore extend beyond who builds community solar capacity. It could increasingly focus on who controls the customer, manages balancing risk and supplies the electricity that the community cannot produce itself.
