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The paper highlights the regional disparities of the Romanian energy system, evaluated from three different perspectives: the generation utilities structure within the eight country development regions; the human resources endowment; the economic and financial situation of the energy companies administrated by each region. Also, our research envisages the regional development perspectives for the national energy system in terms of production units that should be decommissioned in order to comply with the environmental regulations that Romania agreed with the European Commission. The analysis revealed that, despite a national level structural equilibrium triggered by a diversified structure of primary energy resources, the energy systems’ situation at regional and microeconomic levels indicate an important lack of balance between the country regions. Main determinants and effects are depicted in this paper

Determinant factors of the Romanian energy systems’ transformation processes include both positive and negative ones. The former refer to European integration, creation of the Single Energy Market, the important number of clients/consumers, the energy systems’ performances - the first economic structure integrated with the European ones -, the existing primary energy resources etc. The latter include the lack of a coherent domestic industrial policy and the vulnerability of decision makers facing external pressures. The Romanian electricity generation structure has modified during the last 23 years. The main coordinates comprise: a continuous reduction, nearly to extinction, of the main generation company's share of the electricity market; atomization of the generation sector; privatization of five from eight existing distribution companies; creation of the supply segment; and, last but not least, the electricity price liberalization. The paper analyses some of the contradictory tendencies in over 20 year late history of the Romanian energy system and draws a series of possible measures to implement in order to counteract the negative results.

The international economic literature offers a significant number of publications approaching the European energy markets functioning, including comparative studies. The development and performances of the Romanian electricity spot market were less investigated, mainly because of the relatively short period of its functioning. The paper quantifies the impact of the electricity generation utilities’ structure by primary energy resources, on bidding prices resulted after the closure of the day ahead market. The multidimensional regression method was utilized for the models development. As a result, three distinct econometric models were obtained for different hourly periods of the day (off peak hours, peak hours, daily average) for working days and other three models for the weekend days. Based on these models, negative and positive correlations were established between the electricity prices and the seasonal contribution of the different categories of energy facilities to the demand curve coverage.