The first tender for access to the grid is announced for eight nodes of the transmission grid and 3,681 MW of capacity
Published on 18th July 2025
The Resolution of 11 July 2025, of the Secretariat of Energy, announcing the first tender for demand access capacity to the electricity grid, was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) on 17 July. This first tender affects eight nodes of the transmission grid with a total available capacity of 3,681 MW, which will be allocated to various industrial and energy projects.
Following the sharp increase in requests for access to transmission grid to connect new demand facilities and in order to prevent speculative behaviour by developers, Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 of 27 December introduced significant changes to the regulatory framework for access to electricity transmission and distribution grids. This regulation amends the Royal Decree on access and connection to transmission and distribution grid (Royal Decree 1183/2020) and incorporates the holding of demand tenders at certain nodes of the transmission grid as a more effective and orderly method of granting access and connection permits than temporal priority.
In this context, the Secretary of State for Energy is launching the first call for tenders for access to the electricity grid. This initiative affects eight nodes of the transmission grid spread across six autonomous communities, all located in areas of special industrial and strategic interest. All the nodes included in this call have significant capacity and have received multiple requests for access that justify their inclusion in the process.
Specifically, the nodes and their respective capacities subject to tender are as follows:
- in Andalusia, capacity is concentrated in Huelva, at the Cristóbal Colón (503 MW) and Palos (277 MW) nodes;
- in Aragon, the tender is for the Terrer node in Zaragoza for a capacity of 410 MW;
- in Castilla-La Mancha, in the province of Ciudad Real, the tender is being held for the Brazatortas node for the highest capacity of all the nodes: 1,217 MW;
- in Catalonia, at the Francolí node (216 MW), in Tarragona;
- in Galicia, at the Nuevo Vigo node (182 MW), in the city of Vigo itself; and
- in the Basque Country, at the Arrigorriaga (993 MW) and Mercedes Benz (387 MW) nodes, located in Vizcaya and Álava, respectively.
The tender procedure is governed by the provisions of Royal Decree 1183/2020 (amended by Royal Decree-Law 8/2023). Once the Resolution has been published, the applicants included therein (whose identity is confidential) have a period of fifteen days to withdraw their applications for access and connection, as well as to adjust the requested access capacity. At that time, the final list of participants in the demand tender will be published and applicants must submit the technical and financial administrative documentation in accordance with the terms set out in Annex V of the tender Resolution.
The criteria for participation in the tender are as follows: (i) start date of consumption, (ii) investment volume, and (iii) greenhouse gas emissions avoided.
After the evaluation and, where applicable, scoring of the applications submitted, they will be ranked from highest to lowest score and capacity will be allocated. Within a maximum period of six months from the call for tenders, the allocation of capacity must be decided and the facilities that are awarded capacity must apply for the corresponding access and connection permits.
In order to ensure compliance with the commitments made by the applicants, three financial guarantees of 25 euros per kilowatt requested must be provided for each of the three assessable criteria: (i) to ensure compliance with the commitment associated with the start date of consumption; (ii) to guarantee compliance with the commitment associated with avoided greenhouse gas emissions; and (iii) to guarantee compliance with the commitment associated with the volume of investment. These guarantees are in addition to the financial guarantees required for the processing of the procedures for access and connection of demand and storage facilities established in Article 23.bis of Royal Decree 1183/2020.
The guarantees will be returned if the applicant is excluded from the tender and, where applicable, must be adjusted if the access capacity finally awarded is lower than that requested. Likewise, these guarantees will be returned once compliance with the proposed conditions has been verified.
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