The delay of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) to update an obsolete standard to control the electrical voltage and avoid blackouts has allowed electricity to receive billionaire payments through the only mechanism that currently allows ensuring a minimum amount of voltage control in the system, the so -called “technical restrictions”.
From January to this August 26, the cost of technical restrictions markets managed by the system operator, Red Eléctrica de España (REE), has broken a record of 2,493 million euros. It has risen more than 50% in one year and in a few days it will exceed 2,522 million that cost this mechanism in all 2024. Last year the previous annual maximum (so far) was reached for these costs, that electricity marketers must pay the generators who provide this service, especially gas centrals.
Although the trend comes from the back, one of the vectors of the new increase this year has been the mode of “reinforced operation” with which the electrical system has been operating from the historic blackout of April 28. This extra security mattress is based on these restrictions, with more gas and specific moments in which Ree orders to limit the renewable generation entry. Only between May and August, the total cost of technical restrictions has been about 1,311 million, although not everything corresponds to that reinforced operation. But the “reinforced operation”, indicate sources in the sector, are related to the restrictions that are applied in the daily market (a day in advance), which since May adds almost 940 million.
Technical restrictions are not only used to control voltage. They also serve to solve congestions in certain areas, for example. When Ree needs to stabilize the tension dynamically, in the day, it resorts mainly to the combined cycles through them. They can be applied in real time or set the eve of each day.
In June, in an interview with Eldiario.es, the Secretary of State for Energy, Joan Groizard, explained that around a third of May’s technical restrictions would be attributable to that “reinforced operation.” Extrapolating that estimate, one third of those 940 million would be equivalent to more than 300 million. Of those 2,493 million costs accumulated between January and August, 1,452 million are for restrictions applied in the daily market, which only in May fired a monthly maximum of almost 405 million.
Groizard explained in that interview that “the system operator decided, with a criterion of prudence that makes sense, to operate with that reinforced mode, increasing something that already existed, the technical restrictions. The system operator moves us that in May two thirds of the technical restrictions would have been carried out equally and would not be attributable to this reinforced mode.”
In this type of technical restrictions, in addition to gas plants, nuclear can also participate, although only when the REE slogan to control the tension lasts many hours, because these plants modify their load very slowly. The nuclear has very difficult to participate in the technical restrictions that apply in real time and there the big beneficiaries are the combined cycles. As sources from the sector explain, there are gas plants that obtain more than 80% of their income from this mechanism.
The Ministry for Ecological Transition emphasizes that consumers in the free market, with a fixed annual review price, are not affected by the extra cost of the reinforced operation since “the CNMC has already remembered that contracts cannot be changed.”
This cost does move to consumers with an indexed rate, such as the regulated rate of the voluntary price to the small consumer (PVPC). Ecological transition argues that these clients will see the “insurance” of the reinforced operation compensated by the low cost of energy and because part of its price already takes other references – a 40% of the futures markets -, according to the measures adopted by the government to reduce volatility during the price crisis caused by the Ukraine War.
Last week, the third vice president and minister for the ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, insisted in an interview at Eldiario.es that this reinforced operation, “for a country like Spain, which has great renewable resources, is not meaning a substantial increase in invoices. What is certain is that the decision on whether or not it has to be reinforced is in the hands of the system operator.
At the end of July, during the presentation of the semiannual results of Redeia (Ree Matrix), its CEO, Roberto García Merino, defended the need to continue with this extra reinforcement: “It is a measure that is shared with the Ministry and with the CNMC”. While “there are no measures that ensure compliance with the necessary regulations for a safe operation of the system, this alternative has been chosen safely, with a reasonably limited impact in terms of impact for the system,” he defended, days after the Congress knocked down the decree with antiapagon measures.
Regardless of the blackout, the analysis of the REE data reflects how the cost of the technical restrictions markets has exploited since 2020. That year the system operator raised for the first time to update the obsolete voltage control service, whose review the CNMC has not approved so far, although it will take time to be operational.
The delay in giving it green light, sources of the sector point, “has meant an important increase in income and benefits for combined cycles.” If in 2019 the total cost of the restrictions was 247 million, in 2020 it climbed up to 528 million and this year can leave about 3,000 million. In the sector they believe that with a voltage control service of this century, this waste would have been unnecessary.
The CNMC announced in June the approval of the new voltage control service, which will allow the renewables to participate in it (now they can only do so in a very limited way) and that among other novelties will include penalties for all technologies, also to the traditional ones, for non -compliance in the voltage control. The procedure will involve a new route of income for photovoltaic, and not only in solar hours, since there are investors who have a mode (‘q-night mode’) that allows them to regulate reactive energy at night.
The CNMC announced the approval of that standard one day after the government reports and the system operator on the blackout urged it to start, after uncovering failures in the voltage control that the thermal generation plants should do. The executive and system operator reported at some points (fundamentally, Ree’s responsibility in that energy collapse when planning reserve power), but agreed on the urgency of updating that procedure.
As Ree recalled in his report, that service “is pending approval since 2021”. However, your application will not be immediate. Although the CNMC announced its approval in June, it will only begin to be applied in the first quarter of next year, according to the director of Operation of Ree, Concha Sánchez.
Shared responsibility
The government report pointed to a shared responsibility of the entire sector in the blackout. Ree has denied it, blaming facilities of the large electricity obliged by law to control the tension that the irregular disconnection of some renewable plants did not do it that day that the surger reached the maximum established.
CNMC itself stated the voltage regulation in 2019 and 2022, after recognizing “continuous tension control problems”, but decided to launch two pilot projects to test that new system, which will allow renewables (almost all photovoltaic and the most modern wind) regular tension in a massive way with less cost for the consumer. According to the blackout, the president of the super -regulator, Cani Fernández, launched those pilots because the EU forced them to do so.
When in 2026 it will have been spent seven years since the CNMC itself warned for the first time the need to update the voltage control service. The current one dates back to 2000, when the renewables were testimonial and the electric mix was very different from the current one.
The Government Report on the blackout recommended “accelerating the Constitution and adequate endowment of the National Energy Commission” (CNE), the former regulator that absorbed the CNMC in 2013, to have a “specialized and focused supervisor exclusively in the energy sector, in view of the high complexity and specificity of the sector, the growing abundance and concretion of applicable technical regulations, the need for greater supervision and transparency of the sector ”. The bill to recover the CNE has been bogged down in Congress for almost a year.
Source: www.eldiario.es
