Romania is beginning to turn electricity demand and previously passive backup infrastructure into tradeable power-system assets. The shift is creating an emerging market for aggregators and virtual power plants in Southeast Europe. Two developments highlight the change in balancing and flexibility participation.
Balancing reserve from controllable consumption
In September, transmission operator Transelectrica activated Romania’s first balancing reserve group made entirely from controllable electricity consumption. A separate portfolio aggregated by Flexumers supplied 3 MW of upward manually activated frequency restoration reserve, or mFRR, on Sept. 1. The service was provided entirely by reducing electricity consumption, with no generator or storage unit involved.
For industrial consumers, demand response enables sales of a product linked to temporarily reducing or shifting electricity use when the system needs it. Flexible loads can include pumps, compressors, refrigeration, heating and ventilation systems, water treatment, and other processes where electricity use can be moved for limited periods without materially affecting output. An aggregator identifies those loads, establishes a consumption baseline, and combines flexibility from multiple customers into a portfolio large enough for electricity-market participation.
When Transelectrica requests an activation, the aggregator distributes the required response among participating consumers. Customers can receive part of the flexibility revenue. Participation depends on whether the payment for changing consumption exceeds the operational cost of doing so.
Regulatory rules for industrial flexibility services
Energy regulator ANRE approved rules in August that allow eligible consumers to provide consumption-flexibility services directly or through suppliers and aggregators. The framework relies on remotely readable metering to support measurement and verification. The rules are intended to give aggregators access to a pool of assets that requires limited conventional energy investment.
Flexumers estimated Romania could have about 700 MW of potential aggregation capacity. Only part of that theoretical resource is expected to be technically available and commercially viable. The market could allow a steel plant, food processor, cement producer, or logistics centre to participate in electricity markets without owning a power plant.
Batteries at telecom sites tested for balancing markets
A second Romanian experiment applies the same flexibility concept to infrastructure already containing physical energy storage. Telecommunications networks require batteries to maintain service during electricity outages, with thousands of installations spending most of their operating lives waiting for emergency use. A partnership involving Huawei Romania, Bamboo Energy, and Flexumers aims to test whether part of that dormant capacity can provide electricity-market services while preserving the batteries’ primary backup function.
Bamboo Energy provides optimisation technology, while Flexumers provides aggregation and market access. The partners plan to test charging and discharging against market conditions and participation in mFRR and aFRR balancing services. The approach differs from building a conventional grid-scale battery because the batteries already exist.
The investment opportunity is described as focused on software, communications, market access, and optimisation needed to turn geographically dispersed devices into a single controllable portfolio. A virtual power plant could therefore aggregate thousands of relatively small assets that the electricity market treats as one resource.
Software-driven aggregation across sectors
The model also creates an opportunity beyond telecom infrastructure by converting existing resilience equipment into recurring revenue streams. Telecom operators traditionally treat backup batteries as a resilience expense, while aggregation could convert part of that expenditure into revenue-generating capacity. Similar potential exists for data centres, hospitals, logistics facilities, commercial buildings, and industrial plants that maintain batteries, generators, thermal systems, or other equipment whose primary purpose is not participation in electricity markets.
The value described for aggregators is identifying how much capacity can be made available safely, at what times, and under what operational constraints. This requires forecasting customer behaviour, determining asset availability, optimising bids, issuing dispatch instructions, collecting meter data, and proving requested flexibility was delivered. Aggregators also need to manage conflicts between different revenue opportunities.
A telecom battery cannot simultaneously provide its full capacity to several balancing products while retaining reserve needed to protect the communications network. Likewise, an industrial consumer cannot promise flexibility that its production schedule cannot reliably deliver. Portfolio optimisation is presented as the central product supporting virtual power plant platforms, automated demand-response systems, industrial energy-management software, and flexibility verification services.
The emerging Romanian market is described as having two sides: industrial demand response converting controllable consumption into flexibility and virtual power plants converting distributed physical assets into flexibility. An aggregator could combine both within a single portfolio that includes factories temporarily reducing demand, telecom batteries discharging, commercial buildings adjusting HVAC systems, and EV fleets delaying charging.
The electricity system would see the combined portfolio as controllable capacity rather than thousands of separate devices. In this model, the scarce asset is not necessarily generation capacity but the ability to identify, verify, and coordinate flexibility distributed across the economy.