The invisible bill

The stack stands as tall as the price of one kWh including VAT: one coin stands for 5 bani, twenty make a leu, and every layer is to one scale. The bill beside it carries the same lines. Move the years through the caps and past them.

Type a monthly consumption and pick the county on the map or in the list. The energy price is the only layer you choose, through your supplier. The household offers in the ANRE comparator (posf.ro) on 10 November 2026, 72 to 85 in each area, ask between 0.52 and 1.80 lei/kWh before VAT, with the median at 0.97–1.00 depending on the area. The calculator starts at 0.716 lei/kWh: the average paid in the first half of 2026, implied by Eurostat's average price before taxes minus the networks. A daily subscription, where an offer has one, stays outside these per-kWh layers.

For years without ceilings, the sum uses the Eurostat annual average price for band DC. For the ceiling years, the sum is an at-most: the ceiling that applied to this consumption, not one named supplier's exact bill.

Distribution is the regulated layer that changes with a home address. Since 1 January 2026 the combined low-voltage distribution tariff runs from 31.7 to 38.8 bani/kWh before VAT — a gap of 7.05 bani/kWh for the same light bulb. Each operator now has one tariff across its whole territory, so eight areas give four prices. In 2024, when the former areas had separate tariffs, the gap was 10.82 bani/kWh. For comparison, the cheapest energy offer and the median offer are 45–48 bani/kWh apart. Tap a county: the map stays put and the detail opens beside it.

From April 2022 to 30 June 2025 the final household price sat under ceilings set by Emergency Ordinance 27/2022, as amended. In the form applied from January 2023, the ceiling including VAT was at most 0.68 lei/kWh for up to 100 kWh a month, at most 0.80 lei/kWh up to 255 kWh a month; between 255 and 300 kWh, the kWh above 255 cost at most 1.30 lei, and above 300 kWh a month the whole consumption was billed at up to 1.30 lei/kWh. The regulated layers kept moving behind it — the 2024 network tariffs in the table below were already in force while bills showed only the ceiling.

On 1 July 2025 the ceilings ended. A month later the standard VAT rate rose from 19% to 21% under Law 141/2025, in force from 1 August 2025. The band DC average price moved from 0.96 lei/kWh in the first half of 2025 to 1.47 lei/kWh in the second, VAT included. Energy rose from 35 to 75 bani/kWh, and its share of the price from 36.4% to 51.3%. In the first half of 2026 the average stayed at 1.46 lei/kWh, with energy at around 49% of the price (46–51%, depending on how the areas are weighted).

The hypothesis written before any computation said energy would stay under half the price after the caps. It did not hold: in the second half of 2025 energy was 51.3% of the price including VAT. The full-year 2025 average, 45.4%, blends a capped half-year (36.4%) with an uncapped one and describes no real month. The second part of the hypothesis held: distribution differs by at least 5 bani/kWh between areas (7.05 bani). Components for 2020–2025: Eurostat, Electricity prices components for household consumers (nrg_pc_204_c), Romania, band DC; the layer named green certificates and cogeneration here follows Eurostat's renewable-taxes heading — in supplier offers those two lines sum to almost the same value (in 2024: 7.19 bani of green certificates plus that year's cogeneration charge, against 8.47 bani under the Eurostat heading) — and excise sits in the small environmental group. Half-year totals: Eurostat nrg_pc_204. Area tariffs: the ANRE orders cited in the layer table, with the offers filed in the ANRE comparator as a second source for the same values, except cogeneration, which the filed offers had not yet updated to 1.57 bani/kWh. The 2025 half-years: Eurostat half-year totals before taxes, with and without VAT, less Eurostat's annual network component; the mean of the two half-years gives back the annual components exactly. Average paid in 2026: Eurostat's first-half price before taxes, less the mean network cost of the eight areas. Energy prices: every low-voltage, single-rate household offer in the ANRE comparator on 10 November 2026, each offer counted once per area; an offer does not say how many homes chose it. The main limit: a Eurostat consumption-band average is not one home's bill. In 2022 the Eurostat average sits well above the ceilings and does not show what a capped home paid; for 2023–2025 the calculator shows the ceiling as an at-most, not as a sum of layers.

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