First steps in the call for tenders for demand capacity in the electricity grid
Published on 13th May 2025
The Ministry's proposal has been sent to the owners of projects that requested access at certain nodes so that they can submit their comments on the matter.
Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 introduced as a novelty the need to hold "electricity demand tenders" to allocate the access capacity available for demand at transmission system nodes with a voltage above 220 kV, in the event that the demand for electricity supply is greater than the capacity available at the relevant node. The specific criteria, conditions of participation and procedure for demand tenders have been deferred to a later regulation.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge has just prepared a draft resolution to initiate the processing of the first demand access tenders, focusing on eight nodes in six autonomous regions, where a total of 5,390 MW will be opened. Although the draft resolution has not been made publicly available (it has only been sent for comment to the applicants for access to the nodes subject to the tenders), according to the information available, the nodes are located in Andalusia (Cristóbal Colón -503 MW- and Palos -514 MW-), the Basque Country (Arrigorriaga -993 MW- and Mercedes Benz -387 MW-), Aragón (Terrer -410 MW-), Castilla-La Mancha (Brazatortas -2,163 MW-), Catalonia (Francoli -238 MW-) and Galicia (Nuevo Vigo -182 MW-).
The draft resolution proposes that projects should first be selected on the basis of their capacity to reduce avoided greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. electrification of processes). Once this first criterion has been met, a scoring system will be used to select the projects that require the most investment and are likely to be realized sooner. The tenders must be resolved within a maximum of six months of their launch.
