The electricity market in Serbia from January 1, 2015 will be completely open, which means that household can choose their electricity suppliers.
Households now have the right, but not the obligation, to be supplied from the free market. These customers could still remain in the public or, as it is called from now on, guaranteed supply if they assess it is more cost effective. The change of supplier will be apsolutely free, the whole procedure for the change will last 21 days at most, and it will be entirely managed by the supplier and not the buyer of electricity.
Director of Serbian national power utility (EPS), Aleksandar Obradovic said that he does not expect big competition for supply to households due to the low price of electricity in Serbia. There are 84 licenced suppliers of electricity at unregulated prices, of which 44 are active, but only three currently supply the end customers, with EPS covering 95 percent of the market.
EPS supplies end customers at regulated prices which are approved by Serbian Energy Agency (AERS). The total power consumption of end customers in 2014 was 28 TWh. 34 percent of that amount was supplied from the free market and 66 percent at regulated prices, of which the households hold 51 % and the other 15 % goes to so called small customers. According to new energy law, households will the right on the public supply as well as the small customers with the consumption less than 30,000 MWh per year.
Those who consume more than that amount, from July 1, 2015 will have to find a supplier. Currently there are about 30,000 customers at this category and they spend eight percent of the total consumption in Serbia, or 2.64 TWh.