Producers of energy from renewable sources stopped production on Sunday after prices became negative and would have paid if they injected energy into the network, said Martin Moise, first vice-president of PATRES, on Thursday.

“When you design a solar or wind park you must put storage in that park. Unfortunately, this weekend we had an extraordinarily sad moment, which, from my point of view, happened far too quickly. We ended up in the situation which we stopped the parks on Sunday. As the price was negative, the notification made in the market by the operators was zero. Practically, all the energy produced by the parks that we operate would have reached the balancing market, i.e. positive imbalance. Or, how Mr. Ivan (Virgiliu Ivan, director of DEN CNTEE Transelectrica n.r.) also said very well, the price for positive imbalance reached minus 2,000 euros. So basically, if we had produced during those hours we would have paid 2,000 euros for each megawatt- hour that we would have injected into the network,” said Martin Moise, at the Solar Energy Bucharest Summit, according to Agerpres.

He also mentioned that in Romania there is an extraordinary legislative unpredictability, last year there were 17 changes to the primary legislation, which continue to have an impact on investments.

“Almost 10 years ago, in 2014, the atmosphere was very sad. The investments made in the first wave in renewables were on the verge of bankruptcy. The state, after promising something, no longer kept its word and the investors then went into despair. Almost 10 years have passed, things have been corrected in the meantime, it was very difficult, it was a continuous fight with the state, which constantly felt the need to change the legislation. In the meantime, part of the investments paid off , but some still not. And I say when we think about new investments we must not forget the old ones. We still have extraordinary legislative unpredictability. Last year, I think we had somewhere around 17 amendments to the primary legislation, which obviously have a further impact on investments. And here I would like to point out only one thing. We, in Romania, continue to overtax the loss. In the calculation of overtaxation, the expenses for profiling are not recognized, and the expenses with imbalances are recognized only within the limit of 5%,” said Martin Moise.