How and why did the summer energy crisis in Romania come about?

Vladimir Mitev, Mediapool, 27 September 2026

Summary

• Main cause of the crisis: The summer energy crisis in Romania in 2026 was triggered by the drought and low water levels in the Danube, the shutdown of units at the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Station, and the acute shortage of energy storage capacity (batteries and pumped-storage hydroelectric plants).
• Investment roadblock: Transelectrica and the regulator ANRE have awarded grid connection points to ‘paper’ projects without financial guarantees, thereby blocking new investors from connecting batteries to the grid.
• State interests and windfall profits: The state uses the energy companies (Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica, Transelectrica) as a ‘cash cow’ for dividends. The hydroelectric giant Hidroelectrica earns huge sums on the balancing market by selling evening electricity at 10–20 times the normal price, which is why it has no interest in the entry of competing battery storage systems.
• A blow to the industry: Expensive electricity (18 euro cents/kWh) and red tape scuppered the construction of a solar farm for the car factory in Mioveni, prompting Renault to relocate production of the Dacia Spring to Slovenia and make 1,500 redundancies.
• Comparison with Bulgaria: Bulgaria is far ahead in energy storage (8.6 GW of capacity, which is used to balance the Romanian market in the evenings as well), whilst Romania leads convincingly in the number of prosumers.
• A boom in prosumers: There are over 370,000 prosumers in Romania. Around half of them are already installing their own batteries to ensure their energy self-sufficiency.

Interview

Introduction

Dan Pîrșan, Chairman of the Association of Prosumers and Energy Communities in Romania, comments on the setbacks and the recent crisis in the country’s energy sector, caused by low water levels in the Danube and the shutdown of the nuclear power station.

Romania and the development of new electricity storage capacity

Mr Pîrșan, this summer Romania faced a severe energy crisis. Part of this was due to a lack of sufficient electricity storage capacity. However, reports are already appearing in the press that Romania is working on building new storage capacity. What do you know about these developments?

Here, journalists, ministers and officials from the Ministry of Energy, in their official communications – including ANRE (the National Energy Regulatory Authority) – seem to imagine that Bulgaria will remain stagnant, whilst Romania will grow like a girl in a fairy tale. I have always said that this is simply not possible. And I have arguments to back this up.

Even if we assume that you stop investing in storage and private capital in Bulgaria stops investing in this, Romania will not be able to reach the 8.6 GW of capacity that your country has, as there is nowhere to connect this installed capacity. In other words, to put it simply, Transelectrica – the operator that manages the grid connection points – has no spare capacity. Technical permits for connection have been issued but have not materialised and will not materialise; there is simply nowhere to connect the connection points for tens, hundreds or thousands of batteries and pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations.

In other words, if 10 billion euros were to flow into Romania tomorrow from investors and banks for energy storage, they would be unable to put it into practice: they would bring in the batteries, but there would be nowhere to connect them to the National Energy System. And this is, in practice, the main reason why Romania will not be able to develop this sector significantly.

Yes, I agree, ‘the sharks have smelled blood in the water’ and every week there are reports of new storage capacities – enough to make your head spin – hundreds of megawatts every week. But these are merely projects on paper that have not materialised. There are very few available connection points for these batteries — such as those you have in Southern Bulgaria — because most are, so to speak, already reserved, yet the projects themselves remain unfinished.

There may be willingness, there may be optimism, there may be unlimited funds, but we have nowhere to connect them because mistakes were made in allocating the connection points without any guarantees. And here, the regulator ANRE and Transelectrica are both to blame, hand in hand.

The causes of the energy crisis in Romania in the summer of 2026

Romania has far greater energy resources than Bulgaria and, accordingly, far greater ambitions. I can give examples such as its desire to be the leading producer of natural gas in the European Union, the development of wind energy, and so on.

How is it possible for a country with such significant strategic interests, such grand ambitions and resources to have fallen into this energy crisis this summer and to find itself in the situation you have just described — with difficulties in installing batteries?

It is entirely possible, despite the country’s natural resources. Indeed, it is only this autumn that a gas-fired power station will be commissioned, and even that is not funded by the Romanian state — the investment comes from Saudi Arabia, for a plant with a capacity of just over a thousand megawatts; in practice, this is a conversion of an old thermal power station, which the Saudi Arabian investors have managed to carry out, rather than the Romanian state.

The Neptun Deep project for gas from the Black Sea is, after all, a concrete plan. But instead of using gas, instead of investing in storage… we have a fairly significant daily surplus of electricity for six to seven months of the year, generated by photovoltaic panels. Romania has the opportunity to build a pumped-storage hydroelectric power station near Tarnița, but over the past 10 years, six feasability studies have been commissioned and they have still not been able to get the project off the ground.

As for Romania, we could say that it has the resources, but unfortunately it seems that certain interests have led to energy becoming a convenient means for the Romanian state to tax its citizens. Because what you and your fellow citizens need to know is this: 70–80 per cent of the energy is produced by companies in which the Romanian state is the majority shareholder. In this way, these companies have made huge profits, which have been channelled as dividends to the Romanian state.

To put it simply: Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica and Transelectrica were, and continue to be, run politically, without specialists. And the surplus – the money they received from the sale and production of energy – goes mainly towards dividends for the state. The Romanian state uses energy producers as a piggy bank — whenever it needed money, it took dividends.

It is true that, as the majority owner, it did not even allow them to make major investments, but they themselves did not bother to ask for them either. Consequently, even if there were very large investments in storage, energy prices would not fall in either 2027 or 2028, as these investments would be quite limited — in other words, we should not expect a deluge of batteries, as I told you. On the other hand, those who do invest are private companies that will want to sell their stored energy in the mornings and evenings at good prices in order to recoup their investments.

Dan Pîrșan: In May 2026, Romania had 330,000 prosumers

Renault and its interests in the Romanian energy sector

How do you explain the fact that the Romanian energy sector is developing so slowly and, consequently, prices are high, whilst money is made through dividends and through taxation on electricity — a topic you touched upon in your previous interview with Mediapool?

The Renault Group operates in Romania – in Pitești and Mioveni – where they stated that in Romania they pay 18 eurocents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, whilst in Spain they pay between 6 and 7. They issued a warning to the Romanian government that there is a lack of dialogue on this issue and that there is a risk that Dacia – the Romanian brand – could be lost precisely because of the high cost of energy.

This is because someone who was present at the table when the president of Renault Romania made the statement in Paris remarked that, in practical terms, a car manufacturer needs three basic ingredients: people, metal and energy. These are the key elements required for a car company to operate in a given country. They have the workforce, and they’re paid what they’re paid — even the head of Mercedes recently cited Romania as an example, where wages in the car industry are much lower than in Germany. In other words, he held this up as a financial scare tactic. Metal: they have a procurement department that knows where to buy it from. But they have to get their energy from the Romanian state!

Here’s another revelation for you: I was in the Romanian Parliament and sitting to my left was a delegation from Renault – there were senators and MPs all around… The people from Renault Romania took the floor and explained to the politicians in Romanian (they spoke neither English nor French) that the senior management of the Renault Group had granted them the sum of 1.5 million euros to build a solar park to help the plant in Mioveni pay less for energy, at least during the day. They did not give us any specific figures. The project fell through because the distribution operator in the Pitești area – which, just like in your country, has a regional monopoly – demanded almost double the amount just to connect this park to the National Grid. Moreover, the park was to be situated on land that Renault already owned, meaning there was no need to purchase any land. They demanded over 2 million euros just for the connection!

In light of this, the chairman of the Renault Group stated that he was not prepared to pay such a sum simply to connect a single plant. And this is how greed, stupidity or ulterior motives mean that politicians… we received absolutely no response from them! That is what I am trying to tell you. The politicians failed to grasp the consequences of this event. And following it, the Dacia Spring — the electric car that was supposed to be produced in Pitești — went to Slovenia, and 1,500 people were made redundant in Mioveni because the production line was simply relocated.

And so, here we have politicians and certain companies in Romania acting against the national interest. This is an example I witnessed with my own eyes – it hasn’t been recounted or read about. It’s simply that these people showed no reaction whatsoever when Dacia Pitești told them: “We’re going to lose a production line with 1,500 jobs.”

As for the ‘smooth operators’ (the so-called ‘smart boys’ in Romanian socio-political rhetoric – author’s note)… They operate in the energy trading sector and are active in several areas. These individuals, who have embedded themselves in the National Energy System, are so deeply entrenched in politics, in energy companies and in business dealings with them that serious reform is needed. Such a reform, which the – in my view – irreplaceable former Minister of Energy Sebastian Burduja was unable to carry out. Nor has a single Minister of Energy in Romania over the last 10–15–20 years managed to implement it. So the reform of the energy system never actually happened.

Romania has no chance of building data centres

At the moment, there is a global craze for building data centres, which consume a great deal of water and energy, with a preference for cheap energy. What are Romania’s chances, in this situation, of attracting such centres — American, European or any others?

Zero. From my point of view — zero. Because the summer of 2026 proved that we have neither water for cooling nor enough energy. Data centres must operate 24/7 and are extremely energy-intensive, which is why they need cheap energy. No, Romania has no chance of attracting such investments, because energy here is expensive even compared to Western European countries, as well as compared to Bulgaria. So we have no competitive advantages for such investments.

Energy links between Bulgaria and Romania

Large-scale plans for investment in energy infrastructure were recently announced, including plans to increase the capacity of the Bulgaria–Romania electricity interconnector. What can we expect in terms of regional connections and the mutual importance of the two countries in the energy sector?

Bulgaria is very important to Romania — it has been and continues to be so, given that in the evenings it used to supplement Romania’s energy needs with Greek electricity via Bulgarian transmission lines. This is because the shortfall of 2,000–2,200–2,500 MW in the evenings, when there was insufficient water in the Danube and no nuclear power, was extremely costly to compensate for. So Bulgaria put this idea into practice, exploiting vulnerabilities to the south and north, and in this way managed to cover a range that would otherwise have created enormous difficulties. Without Bulgaria playing this role, evening and morning prices in Romania would have skyrocketed. I congratulate the Bulgarian investors who had this vision.

Who were the main beneficiaries in the balancing market and the evening electricity market? Hidroelectrica! Hidroelectrica operates cascades of small hydroelectric power stations on certain rivers in Romania, which it only operates when balancing consumption is required. And they sold it at 10, 15 or 20 times the price they would have charged had they sold the energy during the day. In this way, Hidroelectrica profited significantly from the lack of batteries.

For this reason — so that Hidroelectrica could monetise and make a lot of money alongside Transelectrica (Note: two state-owned companies which the state regards as cash cows) — these two entities (Transelectrica, which determines who participates in balancing, and Hidroelectrica, which was the favourite for this) acted in this way. You know just as well that coal-fired power stations take up to two days to come online, whilst gas-fired ones have even longer lead times. So the balancing was carried out precisely by hydroelectric power stations!

If we had batteries, they would have created huge competition for Hidroelectrica. Then electricity would have been cheap in the evenings, and in a normal country Hidroelectrica wouldn’t have generated those windfall profits. So the simple and straightforward answer as to why Romania doesn’t have batteries — without getting into political wrangling, as I’m not involved in politics — is that there was simply no desire to do so. Because that’s how both Transelectrica and, above all, Hidroelectrica made a mountain of money on the balancing market, which they extracted from hydropower, rather than it going to battery operators.

Prosumers in Romania

What are the latest developments in the prosumer sector and within your organisation?

I have some good news: we’re approaching 370,000 people. We’re growing by over 10,000 prosumers a month. And our association now has over 2,300 members, each paying an annual membership fee of 100 lei (around 20 euros). So the number of prosumers is growing rapidly. By the end of the year, we will have reached over 400,000, and by the end of 2027 — over 500,000.

There is more good news: by the end of the year, of those 400,000, 200,000 will most likely already have storage systems in place, and for at least eight months of the year, many of them will be completely energy-independent. So, prosumers in Romania have realised the importance of storage before the state has, and the time-shifting (chemical/energy) of solar energy from midday to the evening, night and morning provides them with a high degree of autonomy.

How do you explain the fact that the Romanian state — which you criticised for acting against industrial and public interests — has allowed such a large number of prosumers to emerge and become established? Why is Bulgaria, which has done so well with batteries, lagging significantly behind when it comes to prosumers?

European directives have supported prosumerism and led to the adoption of the relevant legislation. We have laws – some clear, others less so, but generally favourable to the rights of prosumers, which I defend. Our association entered the fray relatively late, in 2024, but it came just in time. Before that, there were senators and MPs who supported the European requirements. So we had seeds that sprouted and bore fruit. Once a law has been passed, it is difficult to pretend it does not exist.

The Association of Prosumers and Energy Communities made a major contribution through its knowledge of the regulatory framework, by proposing draft legislation and, above all, through its cooperation with the European Commission. This is recognised at a political level, and the fact that our voice is growing ever stronger makes it impossible for us to be ignored. With 400,000 businesses and households, that amounts to nearly one million voters — politicians cannot afford to take such a large number of people lightly.

For this reason, regarding your question as to why Bulgaria has not followed the same path, I cannot give a precise answer. Indeed, the situation with prosumers in Bulgaria — in terms of their numbers and how they connect to the grid — is utterly discouraging. We’ve done the maths and, unfortunately, for a prosumer in Bulgaria, taking into account all the charges and the feed-in tariff (not to mention the transformers they have to replace at their own expense), the investment would only pay for itself after 18 years! Whereas in Romania, a 6 kW system pays for itself in between 4 and 6 years. That is a significant difference which citizens are taking note of.

And the solution to the problem starts in Sofia — that is my view. It all comes down to the lack of legislation or the fact that, in your country too, the energy sector appears to be strictly regulated. Because we must acknowledge the following: every prosumer in Bulgaria, Romania, Germany or the Netherlands who invests in energy generation on their roof or in their garden, especially if they also have a battery, is lost as a customer to the energy companies. It seems that your companies have realised this and have put the issue on the back burner.

The struggles surrounding the Prosumer Act

You fought for the adoption of the Prosumer Act, which comes into force this autumn. What can be said about its implementation?

We fought and continue to fight, because the battle is not over. Unfortunately, the regulator ANRE attempted to water down the impact of a law that was just one A4 page long by initially drafting a full 61 pages of regulations — as if it were laying down the rules for the migration of humanity to another planet. We strongly criticised the initial draft, which was put out for public consultation. Today (21 September 2026), the new proposals for regulations were published… I say ‘proposals’ in the plural, as two versions have been put forward instead of one, totalling 86 pages compared to the original 61. Unfortunately, I do not believe we will be able to change the regulator’s and the providers’ intentions in any way other than through the courts. This is a battle that prosumers will have to fight, however long it may take.

So the fight continues. The Prosumer Act will introduce European standards, particularly regarding payment methods. In Romania, prosumers were paid for their surplus energy only two years after the billing date — I don’t think there was any other country in the world like that! There were supply companies that didn’t issue invoices for three years, so people had to wait five years for their money. However, we taught them how to switch suppliers and claim what was due to them by law. We beat them at their own game.

Things will return to normal. But let’s see what surprises the regulator ANRE has in store for us in the meantime.

Photo: Nuclear plant Cernavodă (source: YouTube)

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