This was not due to technical malfunctions, but was the result of a situation the Moldovan market had never faced before:
– Interconnection capacity with Ukraine, as usual, remains limited throughout the day;
– market rules that took effect on July 1 changed EnergoCom’s role in relation to aggregators;
– and these same rules allow the imbalance price to go negative when there is excess supply in the system.
In other words, independent renewable energy producers without long-term fixed-price supply contracts spanning 15 years were forced to shut down production to avoid costs exceeding their sales revenue.
On the ENTSO-E platform today, during ten consecutive intervals from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.—when generation peaks—0 MW was allocated for export. Capacity reappeared at 6:00 p.m., rose to 150 MW between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., and then fell by midnight. In other words, during peak generation hours, the energy available for export was zero.
The time interval affected by this issue today is not limited to solar power. According to the generation profile for July 5, it was a windy day, and wind farms, according to the schedule, are operating during the same time period when the system is experiencing difficulties absorbing the surplus. From this perspective, wind power producers are in the same situation as solar power producers—the reduction in the transmission capacity of the interconnection at the Moldova-Ukraine/Romania-Moldova border equally affects both technologies.
This phenomenon extends beyond Moldova’s borders. The simultaneous expansion of renewable energy capacity in Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova means that on weekends, excess generation occurs simultaneously in all three grids.
This partly explains both the negative prices on the Romanian market and the restrictions imposed by the Ukrainian side: each grid manages its own surplus of renewable energy within the same calendar interval, and the interconnection—designed for a different context—reaches its limit when all three systems simultaneously face excess generation.
This is a regional problem caused by the rapid pace of the energy transition across the entire region, rather than an isolated phenomenon of the Moldovan market. And, by all accounts, the time is not far off when electricity consumers in Moldova will occasionally be able to purchase it at negative prices.
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