Solar energy in Romania

Market size and growth

Romania installed about 2.2 GW of solar in 2025, taking cumulative capacity past 7 GW. The residential and commercial-and-industrial rooftop segments each hold close to 1.8 GW, and utility-scale plants account for roughly 3.5 GW. In 2026 the pace has continued: of the 2,514 MW of new capacity Transelectrica connected between January and 21 August, 1,331 MW was photovoltaic. Prosumers, who generate for their own use and inject the surplus, numbered 346,194 with 3,897 MW installed at the end of May 2026, and one in three of them now has a battery.

The largest projects have changed the definition of scale in the market. The biggest site announced and permitted to date, in Arad county, is planned at around 1 GW with co-located storage, and the first utility-scale hybrid sites have set the template for solar-plus-storage development. Individual projects and their developers are covered in our solar analyses.

How solar projects earn revenue in Romania

Three routes coexist. The Contracts for Difference scheme gives 15-year two-way contracts: round 2 in August 2025 awarded 1,488 MW of solar at strike prices between EUR 35.50 and 45.20/MWh, an average of EUR 40.46/MWh, and round 1 had cleared solar at an average close to EUR 51/MWh. Corporate PPAs are the second route, with buyers increasingly asking for hourly matching evidence as CBAM reporting matures. The third route is merchant exposure to OPCOM's day-ahead market, which averaged EUR 150.51/MWh in January 2026 and EUR 109.56/MWh in May 2026, with sunny weekend hours already clearing below zero.

Those numbers describe a market where midday solar is abundant and evening power is scarce. Projects that can shift output, through co-located storage or a hybrid structure, capture more of the price curve than pure solar, which is why lenders and buyers now read hybrid designs as the bankability standard.

Grid access and delivery risk

Grid capacity, not sunlight, decides which projects get built. Since 21 May 2026, Order 15/2026 of ANRE (Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority) requires a participation guarantee of EUR 20,000 per MW for capacity allocation requests, and Transelectrica allocates capacity by area through its updated procedure. CfD winners must reach commercial operation within 36 months, and most awarded projects target 2028, which concentrates EPC and equipment demand into a narrow window. Inverter procurement is also changing after the European Commission classified solar inverters as a cybersecurity-relevant asset for EU-funded projects.

Land and permitting

Utility-scale projects are typically built on agricultural land outside built-up areas, whose sale follows the pre-emption procedure of Law 17/2014, or on land leased under superficies rights. In 2026 the government drafted a law to concession degraded agricultural land for renewable projects, which, if adopted, would open a new land route. Permitting runs through urbanism certificates, environmental screening, building permits and ANRE licensing; the sequence is well understood but the timelines vary by county.

What this means for investors

• Check the connection status first: a valid technical connection permit (ATR) with capacity confirmed under the 2026 allocation rules is worth more than any other document in the data room.
• Model CfD strike prices against your capex and the scheme's indexation terms; solar bids in the mid-thirties leave little margin.
• Design for the price curve: co-located storage or a hybrid structure changes both revenue and financing terms.
• Diligence the EPC contract and equipment schedule as carefully as the permits; 2028 delivery deadlines are shared by most CfD winners.
• For rooftop and C&I strategies, prosumer rules and self-consumption economics differ from utility-scale and deserve their own model.

Momentum Energy's view

Utility-scale solar in Romania is no longer an early-mover market, but it remains an under-built one relative to the grid capacity and demand growth ahead of it. We favour projects with guaranteed capacity, a credible EPC and a storage component, and we are cautious about CfD awards priced so low that forfeiting the bid bond could become the rational choice for the developer.

The view above is Momentum Energy's opinion and is separated from the sourced facts in the tables. It is not investment advice.