Electricity companies have applications for access points for data centers for more than 16,000 MW. This strong increase in demand – 60% higher than the previous year – has generated deep reluctance in the Government, which fears that a wave of speculation will once again take over access to the networks – as has already happened with renewables – and make the development of new industrial capacity in our country.
Faced with this situation, the Ministry of Ecological Transition has taken the bull by the horns and is considering a system of contests that makes it easier for access points to be received by those industrial projects that have greater viability or to clarify – when several requests come together – which may have greater viability in an area.
According to sources consulted by this newspaper, when drawing up the new energy planning – which will be key in said distribution – it is expected that the Executive can take into account the ease of installing new renewable generation plants when granting greater capacity. of access, an extreme that would mean promoting the arrival of data centers to communities such as Aragón or Extremadura, while it could mean greater difficulty for other areas such as Madrid and Catalonia.
Ecological Transition wants to evaluate the solvency of the companies and elucidate the contributions to the economy of the country of the projects to grant the corresponding access permits so that it can be guaranteed that rapid development of data centers does not end up becoming a stopper for the arrival of other types of industrial proposals that generate a greater amount of employment.
Industry request
The electricity companies, for their part, propose extending the guarantees of the current access points – starting at 36 kV – to the rest of the high voltage powers with the intention of putting into operation a system that facilitates the detection of requests made by duplicated or even from companies that have abandoned their investment plans and that are taking over access capacity that is not really going to generate a demand for electricity in the future.
Companies also demand the creation of some typology of milestones that allows them to know if, within a period of five years, the promoters of these points (whether industries, data centers, etc.) continue ahead and propose some type of biannual reminder that can serve to know that the validity of said projects is maintained.
Currently, large companies complain that there is around 15 GW of requested capacity – of the 50 GW that are ordered in total – that they do not know if they are going ahead with their plans, which means blocking potential new accesses and slowing down projects that could be viable.
The electricity companies believe that of the 16,000 MW that they have requests on the table right now, barely a quarter will be developed, an opinion with which the sector’s employers’ association Spain DC also agrees.
More planning
The Ministry of Ecological Transition is currently preparing the future five-year Energy Planning and has 7,000 requests for actions to accommodate generation and demand.
The Executive wants to match investment in networks to the real increase in electricity demand to avoid an increase in consumers’ electricity bills.
To achieve this, as stated in the draft Energy Planning, it is expected to generally increase the maximum investment volume as a percentage of GDP to a value that is considered sufficient to meet the expected network needs (52,360 million) and will leave a margin to the companies so that if the remuneration that is finally set for the next regulatory period is attractive, they can reinforce their plans additionally.
Ecological Transition wants to leave its hands free to be able to modify the energy planning within a period of between one and two years so that it can better adjust the actions included to respond to the needs that arise or to the actual evolution of demand.
The Government established an annual limit of 0.13% of GDP for investment in distribution networks, which is the responsibility of the electricity companies, and 0.0065% for transportation, the responsibility of Red Eléctrica, and it does not want these amounts to be go hand in hand.
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