The number of household electricity consumers who left the regulated market and concluded new contracts on the free market increased ten times in the past year and a half, reaching almost 1.2 million consumers, according to data provided by the National Regulatory Authority Energy (ANRE) at the request of AGERPRES.

In the first three months of 2018, the number of households now joining the free market reached 1.18 million. At the end of 2016, the number of household consumers was 128,692, and one year later, at the end of 2017, it reached 901,854, according to Agerpres.

From January 1, 2018, the electricity market is completely liberalized, and ANRE sets the price only for those who do not want to leave the regulated segment.

In total, there are 8,869,569 energy consumers in Romania, of which 8.5 million households and 342,727 non-households (industrial).

On the ANRE site, where there is a price comparator from different suppliers, there are at least 20 electricity supply offers at lower rates than those from traditional suppliers. Consumers are urged to take into account that there is only a mention to the price of energy per se, and not the final value of invoice, where other non-removable costs that are not subject of the supplier’s decision, such as cogeneration and green certificates contributions, excise duty and VAT. In addition, some offers from the suppliers include the payment of a daily booking fee, which is added to the actual energy price and it actually increases the final bill.

When selecting the offer, ANRE specialists recommend a comparative analysis of the information in the offers, especially those related to price, duration, modalities of invoice transmission and payment, terms of termination of the contract, penalty clauses.

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Two months ago, at an event organized by energynomics.ro and AFEER – the Association of Electricity Suppliers in Romania, Claudiu Dumbrăveanu, director at ANRE, urged consumers to contact the suppliers and check the data from the price comparator on the ANRE site, before signing a contract with a different company. He argued that in a free market, we no longer have to talk about low prices, but about fair prices. “An informed consumer is one that leads to a healthy and fair market,” the ANRE official pointed out. On an average at national level, 45.2% of the invoice is the net cost for power purchasing, 29.8% is the distribution tariff, 5.9% is the transmission tariff, 8.1% is the supply cost, 8.6% green certificates, 2.2% – contribution for cogeneration and 0.1% – excise duty.