New amendments to Bulgarian Electricity Trading Rules published for public consultation

Following the July 2025 amendments to the Bulgarian Electricity Trading Rules (ET Rules) (Bulgaria liberalises its electricity trading rules), a draft bill for further amendments was published and the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (EWRC) has scheduled a public consultation for 13 January 2026.

The proposed draft aims to further align the ET Rules with recent changes to the Energy Act and establish a legal and operational framework for new categories of market participants, including active customers, citizen energy communities, self-consumers of electricity from renewable sources, and renewable energy communities (i.e. the New Market Participants).

The amendments are intended to facilitate the development of these participants, encourage self-consumption, reduce distribution losses, and contribute to more predictable energy costs, while ensuring compliance with EU law, including Directive (EU) 2018/2001, Directive (EU) 2019/944, and Regulation (EU) 2019/943.

The proposed draft:

• Explicitly provides for the participation of these New Market Participants and defines the contracts they can conclude.
• Defines the scope of participation, establishes the types of participants, allows grouping of sites for joint electricity consumption or production, and sets technical requirements for commercial metering devices with remote reading capability.
• Establishes procedures for registering participants and groups with the relevant network operator, including cases of sites connected to multiple networks, rules for changes in group composition, deregistration, and obligations to maintain a public register of participants.
• Provides rules for calculating electricity generated, shared, and sold, ensures the exchange of data between network operators, suppliers, balancing group coordinators, and group members, and guarantees that this information is reflected in monthly invoices.

The full draft and explanatory report will be published on the EWRC’s website and the Public Consultation Portal, with stakeholders invited to submit comments and proposals during the consultation period from 8 - 22 January 2026.

For more information, contact your CMS client partner or the CMS experts who contributed to this article: Kostadin Sirleshtov, Borislava Piperkova, Elena Yordanova-Yotova, Viktoriya Dimitrova.