First communities of energy from renewable sources to be tested in Moldova in 2025

Chisinau, 23 December /MOLDPRES/ - The first communities of energy from renewable sources will be tested in Moldova starting from the 2025 year. In this respect, the National Energy Regulatory Agency (ANRE), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), worked out a regulation adopted in late last week, which stipulates the process of creation, administration and distribution of electric energy within the communities and puts emphasis on the transparency, responsibility and sustainability.   

The document implies the clear-cut defining of the roles and duties of community’s members. Each community of energy from renewable sources will be made up of at least two members who, based on agreement on sharing, will contribute to the use and distribution of electric energy from renewable sources. Members can be both private people and legal entities, who set a photovoltaic system and benefit from the energy delivered by a power station managed by the community.     

The creation of a community starts with the establishment of a legal entity, which must be non-profit, followed by the submission of an application to ANRE for the its registration in the Register of communities of energy from renewable sources. Subsequently, the community will build a power station and will use the energy produced inside the community.  

At the same time, the community will have to sign the agreement on the sharing of energy, which will include detailed information about the consumption places, power station and ways of calculation of energy distributed between its members. The sharing of the energy will be made for each consumption place separately and the quantities of energy shared will not exceed the effectively consumed energy, just as it is recorded by measurement equipment.   

In accordance with the Regulation’s provisions, there will be two types of communities of energy from renewable sources: local and regional. The local community will be smaller in terms of space, while the regional community – more extended. In both cases, the members will own power stations which produce energy from renewable sources. The maximal capacity of the power station is established depending on the consumption of electric energy of the community’s members, but which cannot be higher than 1 MW.      

Another important aspect of the regulation regards the sale of the non-shared electric energy. The communities which have their own sources of energy can sell the non-shared electric energy to the providers of universal services or can participate in the electric energy market, directly or through aggregators, under the law. The profits got will be reinvested and used for the needs of the community.   

A community of energy from renewable sources will contribute to the reducing of the invoices through the setting of lower tariffs, will support the creation of new jobs and will allow reducing of the carbon imprint and will contribute to the energy resilience.   

The communities of green energy from Moldova will be tested starting from the next year, with the support of Sweden, Norway, UNDP and other development partners, in partnership with the Energy Ministry and will represent a step towards a greener and more sustainable future.