Spain reserves Beariz grid capacity for renewables, storage auction

Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition has approved a competitive grid access auction for the Beariz 400 kV transmission node in Galicia, reserving all newly available capacity for future renewable energy and energy storage projects.

The resolution, published in Spain’s Official State Gazette (BOE) on July 8, means any transmission capacity that becomes available at the node will no longer be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, it will be reserved for the planned auction.

The auction will be open to new renewable energy generation facilities and energy storage projects under Article 18 of Royal Decree 1183/2020, which allows competitive allocation of grid access capacity at selected transmission nodes when demand is high or new capacity becomes available.

The decision follows a July 1 report from Spanish transmission system operator Red Eléctrica, which concluded that the Beariz 400 kV node meets the technical and regulatory requirements for a competitive capacity allocation process. The Ministry had up to two months to decide whether to launch the procedure.

The main regulatory consequence is that any capacity released or created at the Beariz node after publication of the resolution will automatically be added to the auction and cannot be allocated through the standard grid access process until the competitive procedure has been completed.

The government said the measure is intended to prevent available capacity from being exhausted before the auction is formally launched.

Under Royal Decree 1183/2020, competitive access auctions may be held only at newly planned transmission nodes, at nodes where grid access capacity has been released, or where new capacity becomes available through regulatory changes or grid reinforcement.

For the latter two categories, the regulation also requires certain thresholds related to historical application pressure or oversubscribed previous auctions. On Spain’s mainland transmission system, at least 100 MW of available capacity is required before the procedure can be initiated.

From pv magazine España