MITECO's call on access nodes for renewable generation

Dated 19th March 2024 and until 12th April 2024, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has opened a procedure for expression of interest prior to the approval of a capacity access tender in around three hundred nodes of the transport network.

This is a prior public consultation procedure through which MITECO aims to ascertain the willingness of promoters regarding the implementation of future new renewable generation and storage plants at each of the aforementioned nodes. It also aims to determine which technologies would be implemented.

Specifically, MITECO aims to gather information from promoters on the following aspects:

a) In which nodes among those reserved the agents are willing to compete and whether access to capacity would take place through the transport network or the distribution network.

b) What technology or technologies they wish to compete with.

c) Whether they wish to submit hybrid projects or not.

d) Whether it is a new project or an expansion or hybridization of one already in operation or with granted access.

e) Whether the projects are associated with self-consumption modalities.

f) Whether the projects involve R&D.

g) Whether the project already has a favorable Environmental Impact Declaration.

The opening of this expression of interest consultation by MITECO is preceded by the public information procedure opened in June 2022 in relation to the failed ministerial order project calling for the first access tender in some of the reserved nodes at that time.

Obviously - and this is what MITECO itself emphasised - participation in the same will in no case grant any right or additional points in the eventual holding of an access competition. It does not seem too attractive to reveal the desired connection node. However, this is a great opportunity for the voice of the promoters to be taken into account from the first steps of a future access capacity tender for renewable generation and storage. And to avoid reproducing the risks and commitments, guarantees already contained in the previous draft order, both for the facilities and for the related evacuation infrastructures (including shared ones), which made participation in the auction very difficult. In short, it is a question of not letting this procedure pass without the interested promoters being able to propose how to face the bidding process with the necessary legal and economic security required by the relevant investments foreseen.