This Great drought It threatens to shock again in electricity production in Spain. later Historically bad for 2022 hydro There was a temporary stagnation in production increases in the Spanish market during the winter, but now the absence of rain is directly affecting the production of hydraulic power plants.
Heavy rains that were almost punctual in the last weeks of last year and the first weeks of this year caused the production of hydroelectric power plants to increase in the first quarter of the year after the collapse last year. Hydroelectric generation was 66% higher between January and March To the same months of bleak 2022, but the recovery looks only temporary.
After winter, hydropower broke the trend and lWaterfalls started recording the falls He is the manager of the generation, power system and high-voltage transmission grid, down 15% in April (at 1,531 gigawatt hours, GWh) and 31% in the first half of May (at 754 GWh), according to Red Eléctrica de España (REE) records. Persistent drought threatens to perpetuate production declines.
dwindling reserves
The electricity sector and the Government itself refrain from forecasting even less about the volume of hydroelectric generation in the coming months or even the whole year, but given the particular dependence of such facilities on the development of precipitation records that are always uncertain. The forecasts do not foresee heavy rainfall in the medium term and consistently. However, there is fear from energy companies that after bleak 2022, another bad summer for the hydro company and another bad year as a whole.
now, Spanish reservoirs continue to drain According to the data released to the public by the Ministry of Ecological Transformation in its weekly hydrological report, they have reserves every week and currently make up only 48% of their total capacity (compared to almost 69% of the average of the last ten years for these dates). newsletters.
This the current reserve of reservoirs especially for hydroelectric generation more than all Spanish water reserves. 66.6% occupancy its capacity, which has been accumulating continuous declines for months and is well below the average of the last ten years (78.1%) and the last five years (72.7%).
A negative record 2022
2022 has been a historic year for the hydroelectric company. Historically bad. Hydroelectric power plants reduced their production due to the weight of the drought, marks a new negative record. Hydraulics produced barely 17,900 gigawatt hours (GWh) in all of 2022; That’s 40% less than the previous year and is the worst record in the entire historical series in over three decades for electrical system manager Red Eléctrica de España (REE). .
The collapse of the hydroelectric power station last year was added to the other factors that caused the reversal of the distribution of power generation technologies and made the power system dependent on fossil fuels. In addition to the drought, the contribution of wind power has been much less than expected for months, with cumulative decreases until the end of the year, and electricity exports to France and Portugal hit all-time highs due to the problems experienced. neighboring countries (half the French nuclear park has stopped and Portuguese hydroelectric production has also collapsed due to drought).
the result was utilities triggered gas flare last year to produce all the electricity needed to meet demand. According to REE data, gas power plants increased their electricity production by 53% to 68,183 GWh in 2022. Thus, combined cycles have become the main electricity generation technology in the country, focusing on almost a quarter of all energy produced (24.7% of the total) and surpassing nuclear and wind power.
Coal-fired power plants, which are still in operation, also benefited from the high electricity prices in the wholesale market, increasing their production by 56%, reaching the highest figure of the last three years with 7,797 GWh. this enabled them to become profitable again from time to time.
A reversal in power generation that has caused the electrical system to break the trend of reducing CO2 emissions for four consecutive years, leading to record lows over the past three years. In 2022, electricity companies generated 44.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions with their generation plants, a strong increase of 24% compared to the previous year.