A survey conducted on a pool of 100 household electricity consumers by the Intelligent Energy Association showed that 93.87% of them do not know that the electricity market is to be liberalized on January 1, 2021 and 89.08% of consumers are not aware if they have been notified that the electricity market is being liberalized on 1 January 2021.
Starting with January 1, 2021, the electricity market will be completely liberalized, the supply of electricity will be made in a competitive regime, including for the category of household customers who benefit from regulated tariffs between July 1 and December 31, 2020. Each household customer must choose a supplier according to their specific needs and the competitive offers made available by them.
In order to support household customers, ANRE has developed a regulatory framework for the complete liberalization of the electricity market, starting with January 1, 2021, which established obligations for suppliers to provide information to household customers on liberalization of electricity market (through invoices issued, website, display at information points, etc.).
According to the ANRE Order 171/2020 in order to carry out the activity of informing consumers regarding the liberalization of the electricity market, the suppliers of last resort have the obligation to send to the household customers from their own portfolio, between October 1, 2020 – December 1, 2020, a notice regarding the liberalization of the electricity market since 1 January 2020; and in December 2020, after the approval by the National Energy Regulatory Authority of the regulated tariffs for the distribution service, an offer for the universal service.
“Even though we are close to the middle of December 2020, the suppliers have not sent any offer so that consumers know the price they will pay in 20 days for electricity and analyze the opportunity to change the electricity supplier, which anyway takes a lot of time. Considering the lack of offer… January 1, 2021 will catch the household consumers at the current energy supplier at the price set unilaterally by it,” claims the Intelligent Energy Association.