In brief
- From 25 September 2026, a renewable energy community can ask the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) for an analysis that may result in a lower distribution tariff. The reduction applies only to the energy produced or drawn from batteries and consumed within the community itself, and the analysis is carried out only at the community’s request, never of the authority’s own motion.
- The route has three steps and a cost paid before any result. The community asks the distribution operator for the data, and the operator has 15 days to send it, then it files the application with ANRE, which has at most 60 days for the analysis. The charge paid to the operator is that of a technical connection approval calculated on the sum of the capacities of all the members, and it is not refunded if the result turns out negative.
- The reduction obtained lasts 5 years, but is lost even through simple lateness. If the distribution operator announces a change in the network, the community has 45 days to file the documentation for redoing the analysis. If it does not file it, ANRE issues the decision ending the effects, without checking any further whether the benefits have held.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania no. 808 of 23 September 2026
In force from: 25 September 2026, the date set by Article 3 of the order, two days after publication
The panels on the roof of the school or of the town hall, for which the Ministry of Energy has already opened 650 million euro in funding for panels and batteries at town halls, schools and hospitals, can from 25 September 2026 supply the houses around them at a lower network tariff. Order no. 58/2026 of the President of the National Energy Regulatory Authority, published on 23 September 2026, approves the methodology for calculating whether an energy community relieves or burdens the network in its area. If it relieves it, the community pays less for carrying the energy it shares among its members.
The order has three articles and one annex. Article 1 approves the methodology, Article 2 places its implementation with the economic operators in the electricity sector, and Article 3 sets the date of entry into force itself: 25 September 2026. That is why two days of grace remain between publication and application, instead of the order applying from the very day of publication. The act was signed in Bucharest on 22 September 2026 by George-Sergiu Niculescu, the President of the regulatory authority. The legal basis invoked in the preamble is Article 226(2) of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 163/2022 on the promotion of energy from renewable sources, approved by Law no. 110/2026, together with Article 5 of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 33/2007 on the organisation of the regulatory authority.
Article 226 was inserted into the 2022 ordinance by Government Emergency Ordinance no. 59/2025, published in Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 1.035 of 7 November 2025, and its paragraph (2) required the regulatory authority to approve this methodology by 28 February 2026. The deadline came and went without a methodology. By 25 September 2026, 209 days had passed since then, almost seven months, and throughout that interval the right of energy communities to a network tariff of their own existed on paper, with no way of making use of it.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is felt by the energy community, and it starts with an entry condition. Under Article 2, the methodology applies to renewable energy communities entered in the National Register of Energy Communities, to concession-holding distribution operators, that is the companies operating the distribution network under a concession, and to the regulatory authority. Whoever is not registered can ask for nothing. The register is kept by ANRE, and registration follows Order no. 50/2026 of the same authority.
The second effect matters more than it looks and changes the way a community can lay itself out on the map. The tariff reduction does not apply to all the members’ bills, but only to the quantity that Article 3 of the methodology calls electricity produced or stored and consumed within the community. The definition carries a physical limit: the energy has to be produced from renewable sources within the community or drawn from the community’s batteries, consumed at the members’ sites within the same settlement period, and to pass exclusively through the distribution network of a restricted area, at a single voltage level. In the low-voltage network, the area narrows to the feeders of the same transformer substation. In the medium-voltage network, to the feeders of the same transformer station. That means neighbours on the same transformer substation, not members scattered across a town. Energy that climbs a voltage level falls out of the calculation.
The third effect is a bill paid before any result. The community asks the distribution operator for the data needed for the analysis and sends it, under Article 4, the list of the members’ consumption and generation sites, the estimated annual quantities of generation, consumption, storage and delivery into the network, the estimated quantities of shared energy and the characteristics of the batteries. For the calculation and the supply of the data, the community pays the operator a charge equal to that of the technical connection approval for a single consumption or generation site, but with the capacity equal to the sum of the capacities approved for all the members. The charge therefore grows with every member brought into the community, is paid at the outset and stays paid even if the analysis turns out negative.
The fourth effect falls on the distribution operator, which becomes the supplier of the community’s evidence. Within 15 days of the request, it is obliged to send twelve categories of data, from the network losses and their cost at each voltage level, in the version without the community and in the one with it, through to the investments forecast for the current year and the following four, the investment works avoided or arising in addition, their costs, the congestion of the previous year and the congestion avoided, the costs of the flexibility services the community provides for solving local congestion, and the improvement in voltage quality in the network. This also includes the validation of the data sent by the community, so the operator confirms or contradicts the members’ estimates.
The fifth effect is the calculation. The regulatory authority compares two situations: the network before the community was entered in the register, called the reference scenario, and the network once the community is operating. The result is a simple subtraction, benefits minus additional costs. The benefits include the network losses avoided, the capital and operating investments avoided, the congestion avoided and, where applicable, other quantifiable benefits, such as better voltage in the network. The additional costs include the increased losses, the additional investments, the additional operation, the additional congestion and the costs of the flexibility services provided by the community. The authority’s deadline is at most 60 days from the date on which the file is deemed complete.
The sixth effect is the decision. If the result is positive, the authority issues the decision approving the reduction of the distribution tariff for the energy shared within the community and communicates it both to the operator and to the community. If the result is negative, the community receives only the analysis, possibly accompanied by technical or operational recommendations that could increase its benefits at a further attempt. A favourable decision lasts 5 years from its communication and is extinguished earlier only through the decision ending its effects.
The seventh effect is the one that can take back what was gained. For as long as the reduction is in force, the distribution operator watches what the community does to the network and is obliged to notify the community and the authority when a change appears that may significantly influence the result, in the losses, in the congestion, in the flexibility services or in the costs. From the date on which the operator sends the notification, the community has 45 days to file with ANRE the documentation for redoing the analysis and the request to that effect. If the analysis, once redone, turns out negative, the reduction stops. If the documentation does not arrive within those 45 days, Article 13(4) leads to the same outcome, without anyone checking whether the benefits have held.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The substantive change is that a route appears where until 25 September 2026 there was none. Government Emergency Ordinance no. 59/2025 gave energy communities the right to ask the regulatory authority for a transparent analysis of costs and benefits, from which the network costs applicable to the sharing of energy would emerge, but left the methodology to ANRE, with a deadline of 28 February 2026. Until the order of 23 September 2026 there was no act saying what data is gathered, who supplies it, how long it takes and who decides. A community that had asked for the analysis before that date would have had nothing to receive.
The second change concerns who can actually ask. The National Register of Energy Communities was opened by ANRE Order no. 50/2026, and the first two communities were entered in it on 2 September 2026: Asociația Comunitatea Portului, a renewable energy community, and Societatea Cooperativă Energetică Micăcasa Coop, a citizens’ energy community. So on the date the methodology enters into force there is in Romania a single renewable energy community able to use the mechanism, registered 23 days earlier. The second does not fall within the scope of the methodology, which stops at communities based on renewable sources.
The third change shows only when the published text is set against the draft that ANRE put out for consultation on 5 March 2026. The draft required the community to attach proof of payment of the charge to the distribution operator and, for communities without a licence, proof of payment of a contribution to ANRE, plus an exemption from a second contribution if a new analysis was requested within one year of the first. The published text contains none of those three provisions. The contribution to ANRE nonetheless remains open: the explanatory note to the draft says that, for the order to be applied, ANRE Order no. 82/2025 on the charges and financial contributions levied by the authority in 2026 has to be supplemented, so that applications from communities are treated like those from non-concession-holding distribution operators. That supplement is not part of the published order, so the total cost of an application cannot be read from it.
The fourth change concerns the status of the distribution operator, which moves from mere service provider to party in a procedure. Until now it had no obligation connected with energy communities. From 25 September 2026 it has a 15-day deadline for twelve categories of data, a standing monitoring obligation throughout the 5 years and an obligation to notify any significant change. In return, the methodology provides no consequence whatsoever for an operator that misses the 15-day deadline.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The right to pay less for the network becomes usable. Until 25 September 2026 it sat in the ordinance without a procedure, so no community could obtain anything from it.
- The list of data is closed and written into the act, five categories on the community and twelve on the distribution operator. Neither can the community be led along with endless requests, nor can the operator be caught out by new questions.
- The distribution operator has a firm 15-day deadline for the data and cannot refuse to supply it, so the community does not depend on its goodwill to put its file together.
- The comparison is made between the network before the community was registered and the network afterwards, at each voltage level separately. The community does not answer for problems that arose in the network from other causes.
- The improvement in voltage quality in the network is expressly counted among the benefits, although it is hard to express in lei. Many small communities sit precisely at the end of a long line, where voltage is the very problem.
- A negative result is not a final refusal. The authority may attach technical or operational recommendations, and the community can come back once it has applied them.
- A favourable decision lasts 5 years, exactly the horizon over which the operator has to forecast its investments, so the community has a stable interval for its own calculations.
What remains a problem
- The act does not say by how much the tariff falls. The analysis produces a single figure, the difference between benefits and costs, and the decision hangs on its sign, not on its size. No community can estimate in advance what it stands to gain.
- The cost is paid before the result and grows with the number of members, because the charge owed to the operator is that of a connection approval calculated on the sum of everyone’s capacities. The largest communities pay the most to find out an answer that may be „no”.
- The physical limit in the definition of shared energy confines the community to a single transformer substation or a single transformer station. An association with members in different neighbourhoods is left with part of its energy outside the reduction.
- The authority’s 60 days run from the date on which the file is complete, not from filing, and any request for additional data pushes that date further out. The number of requests is not limited, and the verification step has no deadline.
- The reduction is lost even without any real change in the network, if the documentation for redoing the analysis does not arrive within 45 days. Of those 45 days, up to 15 can go on waiting for the operator’s data.
- The 45 days run from the date on which the operator sends the notification, not from the date on which the community receives it. The day from which the count starts is set by the other side.
- Citizens’ energy communities do not appear in the scope, although they too share energy in the same network. For them there is no written route to a reduced tariff.
- Communities connected to a distribution network that is not under concession have no one to ask for the data, because all the supply obligations fall on the concession-holding operator.
- The money the community receives for the flexibility services it provides in order to solve local congestion is entered under additional costs, so it reduces the very result on which the tariff reduction depends.
Practical advice
- Check your entry in the National Register of Energy Communities before anything else. Article 2 reserves the mechanism to communities that are already registered, and registration is done separately, under ANRE Order no. 50/2026.
- Look at the map before you look at the budget. Count how many members are on the feeders of the same transformer substation, at low voltage, or of the same transformer station, at medium voltage. Only the energy that flows there enters the quantity benefiting from the reduction.
- Ask the distribution operator, in writing and before filing the application, for the exact amount of the charge you will pay. It is calculated as the technical connection approval for the sum of the capacities of all the members, so it depends on how many members join the community and with what capacity.
- Put in the application the correspondence address at which you receive the operator’s notifications. The 45-day deadline for redoing the analysis runs from the date on which the operator sends the notification, not from the date on which you read it.
- Do not file your application with ANRE using data the operator has not validated. Validating the information sent by the community is one of the operator’s twelve obligations, and an estimate it contradicts turns into a request for completion and postpones the start of the 60 days.
- Keep the documentation for redoing the analysis ready throughout the 5 years. The operator’s notification can come at any time, and the 45 days are not extended on the ground that the new data comes from the operator and that it has 15 days to send it.
- If you sell flexibility services to the network operator, work out separately what you lose in the cost-benefit analysis. The amount received is entered under additional costs and is deducted from the benefits, even where the service solved the congestion.
- Put the date of communication of the favourable decision in your calendar. Its validity lapses automatically 5 years after that date, and the methodology provides for no simplified renewal: the whole route starts again, including payment of the charge to the operator.
Frequently asked questions
From when can an application for a cost-benefit analysis be filed?
By how much does the distribution tariff fall?
How long does the procedure take, from the first step to the decision?
Which energy benefits from the reduction?
How much does the application cost and who collects the money?
How long does the tariff reduction last once obtained?
What happens if the distribution operator does not send the data?
Does the methodology also apply to citizens’ energy communities?
Can I challenge the result of the analysis?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article 1(2), Article 9 point 5 and Article 11(1) of the methodology. The declared object of the analysis, repeated in the title of the order, in Article 1 of the order, in the title of the annex and in Article 1(2) of the methodology, is the determination of the total distribution system costs applicable to the sharing of renewable energy. That notion appears in none of Articles 4 to 13, is not defined in Article 3 and is calculated nowhere. The only result the methodology produces is, in Article 9 point 5, the difference between benefits and additional costs, and Article 11(1) ties the decision to reduce the tariff to that difference being positive, not to its size. Neither the community nor the distribution operator can establish from the act by how much the tariff falls, although the act is named after exactly that operation.
- Article 8(3), (4) and (5) read together with Article 10. Paragraph (3) places the obligation to answer the authority’s request for additional data on the community and on the distribution operator alike. Paragraph (4), however, sanctions only the community’s silence, with the rejection of the file as incomplete. If it is the operator that fails to answer, the act provides for no consequence, and the date of completion of the documentation, provided for in paragraph (5)(b) as the moment from which the 60 days of Article 10 run, never occurs. For one and the same application, two solutions can therefore be argued: that the period started on filing, under letter a), or that it did not start at all, because letter b) has become applicable and cannot be fulfilled. The community is left with no answer and no deadline.
- Article 9, opening sentence. The text says that the analysis carried out by the authority „poate include” the elements listed, may include them, and among those, at point 5, the result of the cost-benefit analysis. Article 11, however, makes that result the only condition for the decision: paragraph (1) applies if the result is positive, paragraph (2) if it is negative. The element on which the whole legal effect hangs is therefore optional in the article describing it and mandatory in the article applying it. In the explanatory note to the draft, ANRE calls the same list the minimum content of the cost-benefit analysis, which the published text does not establish.
Editorial analysis
The methodology solves a real problem and solves it in a defensible way: it ties a community’s network tariff to its measured effect on the network, rather than to an exemption handed to everyone in a lump, and it closes the list of data the two sides can ask of each other. The problem lies in the calendar. The deadline in Article 226(2) of Emergency Ordinance no. 163/2022 was 28 February 2026, and the order enters into force on 25 September 2026, that is 209 days later. The figure that says the most, however, is a different one: from the publication of the ordinance that introduced the deadline, on 7 November 2025, to the due date, the authority had 113 working days at its disposal. The delay is almost twice as long as the time it was given. On top of that, the draft was put out for public consultation on 5 March 2026, five days after the statutory deadline had already expired, and the window for comments was cut to 10 working days on the ground, written into the explanatory note, that the deadline for approving the methodology was „extrem de redus”, extremely short. The consultation closed in mid-March, and the order was signed on 22 September: more than six months after the last comment received. The urgency pressed on the side of those consulted, not on the side of the issuer.
The second observation comes out of two dates that do not sit in the same act. The National Register of Energy Communities received its first two entries on 2 September 2026, and the methodology enters into force 23 days later. Of the two communities, only one, Asociația Comunitatea Portului, is a renewable energy community, and therefore the only one falling within the scope of Article 2. The other, Societatea Cooperativă Energetică Micăcasa Coop, is a citizens’ energy community and is mentioned nowhere in the methodology, although it shares energy through the same network and produces the same effects on losses and congestion. The text of paragraph (3) of the same Article 226, reproduced by ANRE in the explanatory note to the draft, requires the authority to draw up the analysis „în cadrul unei comunități de energie a cetățenilor” as well, within a citizens’ energy community. The mechanism delivered therefore covers, for now, exactly one of the two communities in existence.
The third observation concerns the arithmetic of the deadlines and shows who has time and who does not. On the way in, the minimum route to a decision is 75 days: 15 for the operator’s data, 60 for the authority’s analysis. To those are added the checking of the file, for which Article 8 provides no deadline at all, and the requests for additional data, unlimited in number, each pushing further out the moment from which the 60 days run. On the way out, the ratio is reversed. Article 13(2) gives the community 45 days to file the documentation for redoing the analysis, and that documentation includes the data only the operator can produce, for which it has 15 days under Article 5. That leaves 30 days of the community’s own work, and the clock starts not when the community finds out but when the operator sends the notification. The sanction for overrunning is complete and automatic: paragraph (4) leads to the effects of the decision ending, with no check of the real situation in the network. A community that has genuinely cut network losses loses its reduction over a letter sent a day late, and to win it back it goes through the whole route again, the charge paid to the operator included.
The fourth observation concerns a point at which the methodology works against the policy that called for it. The costs of the flexibility services the community provides in order to solve local congestion appear three times in the act, in Article 5(i), in Article 9 point 3(e) and in the formula at point 5, and every time on the side of the additional costs. A community paid at the value of the congestion it relieves therefore sees its receipts subtracted from its own result, and the operation becomes neutral in the analysis at precisely the moment when it is of most use to the network. Directive (EU) 2023/2413, known as RED III, is defined in Article 3 point 2(g) of the methodology and is then used nowhere else in the act, although it is, according to the same explanatory note, the European text requiring Member States to actively encourage the participation of energy communities in the market „inclusiv prin servicii de flexibilitate”, including through flexibility services. It is worth adding, for context, that ANRE consulted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and recorded in the note that the organisation had not identified, in any of the states examined, a methodology of the kind required by Article 226(2). Romania is writing here without a model, which is one more argument for a review clause, rather than for an act applied unrevised for 5 years.
What should be changed
- The methodology needs the rule that turns the result into a tariff. Either a percentage applied to the distribution tariff, or a formula dividing the net benefit by the quantity of shared energy, written into the text and not left to the decision. Without it, two communities with very different results can receive the same reduction, and neither can work out in advance whether it is worth paying the entry charge.
- The charge paid to the distribution operator ought to be capped and tied to the actual work, not to the sum of the members’ capacities. As drafted, a community of 40 households pays for its data as if it were connecting a single industrial consumer, although the operator’s effort does not grow proportionately. A cap and a reduction for a second application in the same year would make the mechanism accessible to small communities, which are exactly the ones European policy has in mind.
- The 45-day deadline in Article 13(2) ought to run from receipt of the notification and to be suspended for the duration of the operator’s 15 days. Otherwise the community answers with its own right for a period someone else consumes. The minimum alternative is for the operator’s notification to trigger automatically its own obligation to send the data, within the same period.
- Losing the reduction for failing to file the documentation ought not to be automatic. A formal notice, with a short additional period, would keep the sanction where it is justified, namely with the community that refuses re-verification, and would take out of it the case of the community that was administratively late even though the network is better off with it than without it.
- The flexibility services ought to be taken off the cost side or expressly set against the avoided congestion they produce. Otherwise the act discourages precisely the behaviour that the directive invoked in its own definitions asks Member States to encourage, and a community ends up calculating whether it is more profitable not to help the network.
- Citizens’ energy communities and those connected to distribution networks not under concession need a written solution. Either an extension of the scope, or a separate act with a deadline. Until then, some of the communities entering the register are left without a route to a tariff reduction, and without the act saying why.
- A review clause at two years would suit better than a validity of 5 years left untouched. The methodology applies in a field where the authority itself found that it has no model in other states, and the first files will show which data is missing and which deadlines do not hold. A scheduled review is cheaper than correction through individual cases.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 808 of 23 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 97 KB the act starts on page 10
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