The Energy Agency of the Republic of Serbia, AERS, is completing consultation on rules for supplier and aggregator switching, with the consultation closing on Sept. 30. The draft includes aggregator changes even when a customer already has a full electricity-supply contract. The framework is intended to support a model where flexibility can be monetised separately from electricity supply.
Switching rules and the independent aggregator definition
Serbia’s Energy Law defines an independent aggregator as an aggregator not connected with a customer’s electricity supplier. The law allows independent aggregators to participate in electricity markets without consent from other market participants. It also protects customers using independent aggregators from unjustified charges, penalties, or contractual restrictions imposed by suppliers.
AERS’ switching framework is presented as more than a procedural change for market participants. It is expected to provide operational support for turning legal rights into a customer-facing service. Under the emerging model, an industrial company could keep purchasing electricity from its existing supplier while contracting another company to manage flexible loads.
Two relationships between supply and flexibility
The model separates energy procurement and billing from flexibility management. The supplier handles energy procurement and billing, while the aggregator manages flexibility. For Serbian industrial consumers, the distinction could enable equipment already installed inside factories to generate additional revenue without customers becoming electricity traders themselves.
Flexibility resources are not limited to conventional generation. Industrial refrigeration, water pumping, furnaces, electric boilers, HVAC systems, cold storage, onsite generation, and eventually commercial EV fleets could be grouped into portfolios that increase or reduce demand in response to market conditions. This structure creates two electricity relationships operating through different roles.
Portfolio scale and the role of aggregation
Aggregation depends on scale because individual loads may be too small or unpredictable for efficient trading. By combining multiple controllable sites across customers, an aggregator can create a virtual resource that can be forecast, dispatched, and measured as one portfolio. A plant capable of reducing 2 MW for a limited period may have limited incentive to build its own trading operation.
An aggregator combining dozens of similar sites could form a portfolio large and reliable enough for commercial participation. The value proposition is described as relying less on ownership of physical assets than on contracts, software, telemetry, forecasting, and market access. This approach could bring specialised aggregators, energy-service companies, technology providers, and existing suppliers into separate flexibility businesses.
Market participation requirements and balancing responsibility
The draft framework does not by itself establish a liquid independent-aggregation sector. Metering arrangements, baseline calculation, verification methods, balancing responsibility allocation, data access rules, and technical requirements for individual market products will affect how aggregated demand can participate. The Energy Law already assigns balancing responsibility to aggregators for deviations they cause.
This balancing responsibility is positioned as necessary for commercial operation because aggregation cannot work if customers can promise flexibility without measurable delivery. The emerging market therefore requires increasingly granular metering and automated control. For larger industrial consumers, these requirements could connect with existing energy-management systems used to monitor production, electricity costs, and onsite generation.
Customer choice under the switching framework
Over time, the aggregator could act as an interface between internal energy-management systems and external electricity markets. The AERS switching framework is described as not creating the market immediately. However, it addresses a basic commercial question required for independent aggregation: whether a customer can change its flexibility provider without changing the company supplying its electricity.
As separation becomes operational, Serbia moves closer to a model where electricity consumption can be contracted, aggregated, and traded as a separate energy service.