Given that as of 1 January 2018 liberalization of the electricity market will be completed, also for households, and most of these have not yet opted for a supplier on the competitive market, the role of suppliers of last resort will substantially increase, from next year.

In addition, the updates introduced by the competitive selection Regulation for designating suppliers of last resort (project) promise to make this segment a competitive one, too; the present SoLRs (FUI – Furnizor de Ultimă Instanţă) will become obliged SoLRs (FUI obligat), and the optional SoLRs (FUI opţional) will also appear on the market as of 1 July 2018. Thus, consumers who want to remain in the universal service will be able to get better offers from SoLRs activating on a competitive market.

Also from July 1, 2018, the phrase “tariffs applied by SoLR” will be replaced with the phrase “final prices applied by SoLR”. ANRE specified that the tariff methodology will also be modified, „among others, for correlating it with the provisions of this Regulation”. In fact, a large part of the observations and suggestions sent by the major energy market operators (individual companies, ACUE, etc.) referred to prices and tariffs, and their allocation to force SoLRs or optional SoLRs. These are clarifications that ANRE is going to come with in near future.

Some of the present SoLRs have demanded that a supplier may be designated as an optional SoLRs only if it has at least “20,000 customers served at national level, calculated as an average over the last 12 months”, while others have proposed raising the level of financial guarantees for the optional SoLRs, namely “increasing the value of the Escrow account required in order to designate the optional SoLRs at 100% of the total amount of funds needed to execute the 30-day contracts, instead of 20%.” The Authority rejected both proposals, stating that “the minimum number of customers was established on the basis of monitoring data submitted by suppliers so as to ensure a balance between the relevant experience and a certain level of competition”, respectively that “the amount of 100,000 lei set as the minimum is to cover 30-day contracts for at least 1,000 clients and aims both to increase reasonability among optional SoLR, and to assure that the obliged SoLR who takes over customers will also use DAM”.

According to the draft regulation published by ANRE, the selection criterion for obliged SoLRs is the capability, while for optional SoLRs are capability and availability. “The competitive selection criterion of the obliged SoLRs is the maximum capability, respectively the highest number of consumption places served in the network area, calculated as the average of the values of the last 12 months”, is stated in the ANRE document. In the case of optional SoLRs, ANRE imposes a number of “at least 2,000 consumer places served at national level” and defines availability as “price offer; the discount on the reference price shall be expressed as a percentage, in positive terms, with one decimal place”. The Authority decided that the amount of the discount offered not to be a selection criterion in the designation of the optional SoLRs and explained that “Optional SoLRs will apply the offered discount as provided in the designation decision, at the reference price approved by ANRE for obliged SoLRs in that specific network area”.