On Palm Sunday, Romania had the lowest electricity consumption in history

On Palm Sunday, at 1:43 p.m., Romania recorded an instantaneous electricity consumption of 3,636 MW, the lowest recorded since Transelectrica offers interactive measurement data (2007). If it is the lowest since 2007, then it is certainly the lowest in Romania’s modern history, considering the industrial consumption of the past decades, much higher than the current one. The day of April 28 marks a new negative consumption record, after, on April 14, a historical minimum was already recorded – 3,900 MW, writes Economedia.ro.

Prosumer intake and overall low consumption of electricity

It got here for two main reasons. Once it is about the contribution of prosumers, owners of thousands of MW installed, who, benefiting from warm, sunny days, produce their electricity needs internally, without “pulling” from the system.

Then, general, industrial and household consumptions are extremely low. Factories, big consumers are not recovering their production, despite the fact that market prices have fallen a lot, already reaching below the levels before 2022, the year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Alro Slatina, the largest individual consumer of electricity (by capacity, normally, it has 10% of all consumption in Romania), has not recovered its production. Liberty Galati sits in a single furnace. Also, many factories have started to become prosumers as well. In addition, being warm, the population no longer consumes any electricity for heating.

Low consumption, low electricity production

Yesterday, in general, all indicators in the production/consumption market were at minimums. Beyond the historical minimum consumption, we also had a very low production, due to consumption.

Then, apart from the nuclear power that went in its usual lane, because everything Nuclearelectrica produces has to be automatically taken into the market, we had extremely low hydro power production – around 500 MW.

Water was the third source of production, after nuclear and photovoltaic and on a par with wind, in conditions where the wind did not blow much. Combined, gas and coal plants have barely reached 800 MW. At the time of minimum consumption, we were net exporters, with a little over 300 MW going across the border.

The large supply of photovoltaic energy brought zero and negative prices throughout the interval 9.00–16.00, even registering a negative price, of -65 euros/MWh, at 15.00. During yesterday, we imported energy from Hungary and exported to Bulgaria.

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