Moldova's electricity market will be managed by OPEM (Moldova's electricity market operator), a subsidiary of OPCOM (Romania).
Moldovan Energy Minister Victor Parlicov announced this, noting that OPEM will be registered with the Public Services Agency with the authorized capital of 500,000 lei. He recalled that OPCOM, the Romanian electricity and natural gas market operator, approved the creation of a subsidiary company in Chisinau, which will manage the Moldovan electricity market. The decision was taken at the OPCOM shareholders' meeting, in the context of the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the Moldovan and Romanian governments in Chisinau on December 11 on the implementation of projects needed to connect the Romanian and Moldovan natural gas and electricity networks. In the document, the parties agreed, among other strategic objectives, to create conditions for the appointment of OPCOM as an electricity market operator in Moldova, including an electricity market operator appointed to integrate Moldova's electricity market into the EU electricity market through market interconnection. "Thanks to OPCOM's experience, we will have a functioning power exchange as early as next year. We will naturally merge the Moldovan and Romanian markets, which means that the operators of our market will have de facto access to the Romanian energy exchange," Energy Minister Victor Parlicov said. According to him, this will facilitate the integration of the Moldovan energy market into the common European energy market, and as a result, many problems faced by renewable energy producers will be solved, just like in the developed markets. The problem of imbalance in energy coefficients, which has been a source of dissatisfaction for producers, especially renewable energy producers, will disappear. Importing and exporting renewable energy will become easier. "The appointment of the company, which will be registered in the coming days in Moldova, as the sole operator of the electricity market in RM will be another proof of OPCOM's consolidated experience in managing energy markets by ensuring their continuous, orderly, efficient operation, fair and transparent energy transactions and promoting a single market for the benefit of market participants and end users, who benefit from the responsibility assumed by OPCOM since 2000 at national, regional and European levels with the first interconnection of electricity markets, of which Romania has been a member since 2014," OPCOM said in a statement. Technically, day-ahead electricity markets and intraday, hourly markets will be launched initially. With these instruments, the wholesale electricity market in Moldova will become more transparent and fairer. // 15.12.2023 - InfoMarket.
