Strengthening the Electricity Infrastructure Enforced by Transition Ecological through a Royal Decree

The Spanish government has initiated a new regulatory project to reinforce the country's electrical system, aiming to increase its resilience and respond to the challenges and opportunities of the ecological transition. The project, spearheaded by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO), can be consulted here.

One of the key aspects of the proposal is the focus on eliminating obstacles and issues associated with the electrical service. This includes promoting self-consumption and storage, encouraging the connection of new economic activities, particularly industrial, to the grid, and boosting the demand for electricity in the tertiary and residential sectors, as well as for electric vehicle charging points.

To achieve this, the proposal limits the response times of distribution companies in implementing network extensions. This move is expected to stimulate the demand for electricity, particularly for electric vehicle charging points and the residential and tertiary sectors.

The National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) has been assigned as the authorised authority to review proposals from Red Eléctrica, the System Operator, for implementing efficient and sustainable systems for voltage control services and other elements. Red Eléctrica is also mandated to develop normative modification proposals regarding responses to power oscillations, voltage variation speed, technical restriction programming, and other technical elements that contribute to strengthening system security.

In addition, Red Eléctrica is tasked with developing a new Operating Procedure to coordinate the development plans of the transport network and the distribution network, and a proposal for minimum monitoring requirements for incident analysis. These technical proposals from Red Eléctrica must be ready within three to six months.

The regulatory project also includes measures from Royal Decree-Law 7/2025 aimed at increasing the resilience of the electrical system and responding to the risks and opportunities of the ecological transition. These measures include an extraordinary inspection plan for backup capacities, to be conducted by the Regulator, with a focus on installations with autonomous startup and distribution networks, to be repeated every three years.

Moreover, the proposal defines repowering, a concept included in Directive 2023/2413 (DER III). It also contains provisions for hybridizations of storage modules with generation installations.

The draft decree seeks to prevent another major blackout in the country by setting up measures for supervision and control to ensure compliance by all agents in the electrical sector. Access and connection requests for demand must identify the CNAE code of the activity to be developed. The demand for electricity, for electric vehicle charging points or for the tertiary and residential sectors, is boosted by limiting the response times of distribution companies in implementing network extensions.

Lastly, the regulatory proposal sets the expiration of access and connection rights for demand at five years from the date of grant. This move is expected to encourage the connection of new economic activities and electric vehicle charging points to the grid, contributing to the overall goal of strengthening the Spanish electrical system and promoting sustainable energy.

Strengthening the Electricity Infrastructure Enforced by Transition Ecological through a Royal Decree