May 2010

PNE Wind Plans To Build Four Wind Farms
The wind farm builder PNE Wind, based in the German city of Cuxhaven, plans to develop four wind farms in Romania with a total capacity of 366 megawatts. The investment value amounts to 622 millions Euro. The first wind farm is expected to be completed at the end of 2010. The company already secured for its projects 326 hectares of land in Dobrogea, Moldavia, Transylvania and the Banat, The parks are developed up to a certain point and then are to be sold. PNE Wind has developed 92 wind farms worldwide. In Germany, the company is building the offshore wind farm "Gode Wind II" in the North Sea. In Romania, the developer holds 80 percent of PNE WIND Romania, the rest of the shares are owned by the Romanian company Wind Energy Investment.

April 2010

Four In Ten Romanians Still Cook With Gas Cylinders
Four in ten Romanians still use the old gas bottle for cooking, as a survey by the market research company GfK showed. Six per cent of the Romanians do not use natural gas at all. About 6 in 10 Romanians are not satisfied with the services of their natural gas suppliers. Eleven per cent were indignant about the prices. Dissatisfaction also came from the deficient care and the lack of transparent accounting. More than half of the respondents said to be satisfied with the performance of their electricity suppliers. 13 per cent of the respondents were mainly dissatisfied about the often encountered shortages. On average, Romanian households register four electricity and two natural gas interruptions per year.

March 2010

Chinese To Build Power Plant At Rovinari
The China National Electric Equipment Corporation, expressed its interest to build a power bloc with a rated capacity of 500 MW at Rovinari. According to media reports, the management of the power plant already negotiates for more than a year with the Chinese power company and the determination seems to be high. Regardless of the legal form, in which Rovinari will continue to operate (in allusion to the inclusion of the power plant in the newly to-be-created energy giant Electra), a joint venture company shall be established with the Chinese, in order to push forward the start of the construction. The investment volume is estimated at approx. 1 billion Euro.

February 2010

Electricity Consumption Rose in January By 1 Per Cent
The electricity consumption rose by just over 1 per cent last January, compared with the same month last year, informed the power company Transelectrica. Last year, the electricity consumption fell by 8.3 per cent over the previous year. As the Romanian Statistical Office INS announced, electricity consumption in 2009 was at 48.7 billion KWh. The trend in demand in the industrial sector was downward, for street lighting it grew by 6.5 per cent and the household consumption rose by 8 per cent. With an average price of 9.8 euro per 100 kWh Romania is one of the cheapest countries in terms of the price of electricity for residential consumers. By comparison, in Poland the same amount of electricity costs 14,5 Euro.

January 2010

GE does maintenance for 2 reactors at the Cernavoda nuclear power plant
The U.S. electrical engineering company General Electric signed with Nuclearelectrica, the Romanian operator of nuclear power plant at Cernavoda, in the second half of January a maintenance contract for up to 8 years worth 146 million U.S. dollars (approximately 100 million Euro). According to media reports the contract covers only the currently-developed Units 1 and 2, but the involvement of GE in the construction of the next two reactors is also desired. For this GE only has to tender. The construction of the two reactors is expected to exceed the previously contracts signed by GE in Romania by far: about 4 billion Euro. Until now GE supplied the power company CEZ with 240 wind turbines for its wind turbine park in the East of Romania (700 million Euro), and the oil company Petrom for its natural gas plant (215 million Euro).