During the energy crisis, Spain started implementing a new system. reduce emergency light consumption In case of serious imbalances between electricity production and demand, which must always be met throughout the country. New mechanism has arrived replace old interrupt service This law, which has been in effect for more than a decade, allows for the mandatory closure of industrial plants in order to reduce electricity consumption.
Electrical Network The administrator of the Spanish electricity system recently held an auction to find industrial factories or energy companies ready to stand down if necessary in the event of an electricity emergency in 2024, after making payments of millions of dollars. Companies had to bid at auction the amount of electrical energy they were willing to stop using for a few hours and the price at which they were willing to stop working.
The result of the so-called tender active demand response service Almost twenty large consumers will receive a fixed fee of around 143 million euros next year, 52% more, to which will be added special payments each time they have to stop working, depending on the duration of the outage and the price of the electricity market. right now.
Successful bidders bid 609 megawatts (MW) of power and confirmed their readiness to stand for a total of 5,745 hours (approximately 65% of all hours of the year) at an average price of 40.82 for the stop function. Compared with the results of the previous auction last year, the average price is falling (69.97 euros per MW and hour), while the power (409 MW) and the number of hours (only 2,714) are increasing rapidly.
One stop in one year: 94 million
The total fee received by the companies was 94.3 million euros, constant for a year. During this year, the protection system was activated only once. The shutdown occurred on the night of September 4, when the REE ordered the mandatory closure of several industrial plants in order to reduce national electricity consumption and prevent a significant imbalance due to the lack of sufficient electricity production to meet all demand with guarantees.
Red Eléctrica ordered factories to stop consuming electricity at 21.59 on Monday to prevent a problem arising from the unplanned shutdown of the Ascó nuclear power plant in Tarragona due to an internal fault, which coincided with a crisis. The contribution from the production of wind power plants is lower than expected, as well as the increase in electricity exports, as confirmed by various official sources.
According to official REE records, on the night of September 4, all available 497 MW of power was ordered to be shut down, reducing electricity consumption by 1,424.7 megawatt hours (MWh). For this forced shutdown, the affected factories received an extra €189,756 (€133.19 for each of the 1,424.7 MWh not consumed that night), which was added to the agreed fixed charge for the whole year.
That night in early September, fear of noncompliance caused many factories to cease operations. +The new active demand response system, which was approved by the Government a year ago within the scope of the Energy Security Plan and serves to quickly reduce high electricity consumption (especially large industry) to prevent serious deviations in energy consumption, was put into operation for the first time. operation of the electrical system.
Red Eléctrica emphasizes that although the emergency system was activated, there was no risk of a power outage that night. “Continuity of supply was never compromised; the purpose of the activation order was to guarantee the reserve levels established in the operating procedures in response to a specific situation in which available resources in the system were reduced,” the sources said. from the electrical system administrator.
old deduction
The active demand response system is designed to be applied only at certain times to ensure continuity of supply in cases of energy shortages for certain electricity market regulation services (such as replacement reserve or tertiary regulation). Factory closures can last up to three hours per day for each company receiving the service, and companies must be given at least 15 minutes’ notice.
Current active demand response service,old blackout schedule The new system, which has been in force in Spain for more than a decade from 2008 to 2019, aims to prevent imbalances between production and demand in Spain as a whole by integrating the system’s own adjustment services; Local security situations due to lack of supply or large increases in the price of electricity. Only fifteen companies participate in the current service; The old system paid more than a hundred large factories.
The new system cost just over $94 million in its first year and was used once. The cost of the uninterruptible service, reflected in electricity bills over the twelve years of its operation, totaled €5,258 million (in 2019 this amount was approximately €200 million, but in previous years it had permanently exceeded €500 million per year). Even in 2014 it was close to 660 million euros.
Between 2008 and 2017, that is, for a full decade, Red Eléctrica almost did not use the blackout system, during which it only ordered mandatory shutdowns of factories for five hours (although factories had to participate in forced shutdowns to check whether the system was working well ) at a rate of approximately 88 hours per year). During the last two years of its existence, a legal reform promoted by the Government of Mariano Rajoy made it easier to activate the system for economic reasons in order to prevent strong increases in the electricity market due to imbalances between supply and demand. In 2018, the blackout was activated 50 times, and in 2019, it was activated only 3 times.