Spain returns to bet on renewable energies

If we talk about current energy in our country, today it is talking about clean technologies and renewable resources. After several years where it seemed like a taboo subject, the PP government has decided to get going and give renewables a little push.

Will it be at the insistence of the European Union and to avoid future sanctions? Who knows

European Union

In 2004, the European Union defined that by 2020 20% of the total energy consumption of all countries would have to come from renewable sources. For its part, each country, depending on its means, established a target for the same year, in the case of Spain it was 20%.

According to Eurostat, that can be on request the internet easily, a third of the 28 member countries of the EU exceeded their targets before 2015. Unfortunately this was not the case of Spain, which it only reached 16,15%, with a minimum increase of 0,01% between 2014 and 2015.

solar energy and light price

The forecasts for 2020 were not promising, there was only a small rebound in the use of biomass, the rest from energy production through renewables I was unemployed since 2012 (Decree of PP).

Spain

Due to the crisis there was a decrease in the demand for electricity, which meant that in this country there was more installed power than demanded, yes, most of it generated in fossil fuel-based plants, which made the PP government decide to stop the advance of renewable energies.

Auctions

Five years later, the same PP government decided to carry out a first auction of renewables, which did not work very well, since, among other things, it limited the megawatts allocated to each of the technologies, that is to say, wind farms, photovoltaic, thermosolar, hydraulic or biomass installations.

Luckily, the ministry rectified and on May 17, 2017 it auctioned 3000 megawatts again among the different companies in the sector in Spain, this time, each and every one of the technologies they competed for the sameHowever, according to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), only wind and photovoltaic had real options.

renewable auction in Spain

As has been widely commented on this website, the auction had a great controversy, the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF), considered that with the rules of that auction the photovoltaic installations they were harmed with respect to wind power, for this reason, he petitioned the Supreme Court to suspend the resolution of the Ministry of Energy that established the procedure and rules of the auction.

solar energy is reduced by pollution

These defined that the bid that generated the lowest sub-cost to the electrical system would win, and in the event of a tie, parameters such as the value of the initial investment, the maximum unit sub-cost and the operating hours would be taken into account, this would clearly position the balance in favor of wind power since according to the order approving the remuneration parameters of the type installations for the production of electricity from renewable energy sources, cogeneration and waste, a total of 3000 operating hours for wind and only 2367 hours for photovoltaic.

The Supreme Court (TS) ended up rejecting the proposal, but gave the UNEF the option of claiming financial compensation in the event that there was finally discrimination. The auction was carried out following these rules and effectively the wind installations finished with 99,3% of the 3000 megawatts auctioned.

History of wind energy and the Mills

Thanks to the great success of the previous auction, it was decided to auction another 3000 kilowatts, this time limited to projects involving wind and photovoltaic technology installations. The award as stated, would be for the most efficient option in costs, but finally it ended up being carried out with the same procedure and the same rules as the previous one, claiming that the result had been quite satisfactory.

This time the 5000 MW were exceeded, since the complicated regulation of this auction allowed to grant more power in case of having sufficient demand. In this case, the entire bid was intended for photovoltaic installations, since the companies offered greater discounts, setting a guaranteed minimum price lower than the wind farms, avoiding possible ties.

Portugal will supply four days of renewable energy

In fact, the government's new interest in restarting renewables to reach the goal set by the European Union is logical. The question is, why so much interest and commitment from investors? Well, it seems that, according to the auction rules, the companies they would get financial aid for each megawatt of installed power, not of generated power and also today the installation costs have dropped a lot, so they expect a very high profitability (double digits) for the megawatts obtained in both auctions.


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