Consumers who choose their own electricity grid connecter pay less for these services, compared to consumers who accept the initial tariff proposed by the distribution operator, this is one of the conclusions of the preliminary competition analysis conducted by the Competition Council in this market.

“This shows that our involvement, through proposals for adjusting legislation and the conditions imposed by investigations, has led to improved competition on this market and that the mechanism for contracting racking works, the mechanism by which the consumer selects directly the provider, produced the anticipated effects of starting the process of liberalization of this market,” said Bogdan Chiriţoiu, president of the Competition Council.

Regarding the connection to the natural gas network, the Competition Council has found a significant improvement of the related legislation, in the sense that consumers can select the authorized operator to carry out the design and execution works of natural gas installations and to negotiate this tariff.

The average cost of connecting to the low-voltage power grid, a network to which most household customers are connected, registered values ranging from 978 lei to 2,602 lei. At the same time, the average level of the connection tariff for the natural gas network for a household consumer registered values between 943 lei and 3.346 lei during the analyzed period.

The Competition Council’s analysis has highlighted the fact that there are a large number of economic operators holding the necessary authorizations to activate in the connection works market in order to carry out the design, execution and verification activities of the connection works.

However, the Competition Council found that there are difficulties in contacting authorized operators because some of them did not update their information on the website of the National Regulatory Authority for Energy (ANRE).