The Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has initiated urgent processing, shortening deadlines, for the proposed Royal Decree which approves certain urgent measures to strengthen the electricity system, which can be consulted here. The regulatory project contains measures included in Royal Decree-Law 7/2025 that can be enacted with lower normative status and which contribute to increasing the resilience of the electricity system and responding to the risks and opportunities of the ecological transition.

First and foremost, it incorporates measures for oversight and control aimed at ensuring compliance with obligations by all players in the electricity sector. To strengthen the technical management of the system, it is proposed to enhance the supervisory functions of the National Markets and Competition Commission, which will evaluate the voltage control obligations of those obligated to provide the service and prepare a corresponding report, which will be updated every three months.

The Regulator will also complete an extraordinary inspection plan for replacement capacities, with greater attention to autonomous start-up installations and distribution networks, which will be repeated every three years.

Furthermore, the System Operator – Red Eléctrica – is tasked with preparing proposals for regulatory modifications regarding responses to power fluctuations, the speed of voltage variation, the scheduling of technical restrictions, and other technical elements that contribute to strengthening system security.

Similarly, Red Eléctrica is required to develop a new Operational Procedure to coordinate the development plans of the transmission and distribution networks, and a proposal for minimum monitoring requirements for incident analysis.

These technical proposals from the System Operator must be ready within three to six months; subsequent regulatory reforms must be reviewed by the competent bodies and, if necessary, approved in less than six months after the corresponding evaluations.

Promotion of Storage and Electrification of the Economy

The draft decree facilitates the integration of storage into the electricity system, which should reach a capacity of 22.5 GW by 2030, according to the forecasts of the 2023-2030 Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan. It thus includes specific technical provisions for hybridising storage modules with generation facilities, prioritising actions located within the land occupied by the original installation, already anthropised. To this end, it contemplates measures related to the definition of installed capacity, changing the dispatch priority of installations to avoid penalising hybridisation, and expediting the processing of hybridisation projects.

In order to promote electrification and thus a more efficient use of existing networks, the regulatory proposal encourages the connection of new economic activities, mainly industrial, to the grid by setting an expiry date of five years for access and connection rights for demand once granted, with the aim of preventing hoarding and speculation. In this regard, access and connection requests for demand must identify the CNAE code of the activity to be developed, which must remain the same when the corresponding access and connection contract is signed.

The demand for electricity, for electric vehicle charging points or for the tertiary and residential sectors, is also encouraged by limiting the response times of distribution companies when it comes to implementing network extensions required for new supplies: these will be five days if no network extension is needed, thirty days if an extension is necessary, sixty days if a transformation centre must be built, and eighty days at most if multiple transformation centres must be constructed.

Repowering and R&D&I Platforms

The regulatory project, with a distinct technical content, incorporates other relevant elements into the legal framework, such as the definition of repowering, a concept included in Directive 2023/2413 (DER III).

The proposal also modifies the authorisation of platforms used to connect generation or storage R&D&I installations, so that they may obtain prior administrative authorisation and administrative authorisation for the construction of type projects. This will allow a single exploitation authorisation to be sufficient for disconnecting a prototype and connecting a new one.

Objections to the proposed Royal Decree may be submitted until 11 August to [email protected], with the subject: “Objections to the PRD Urgent Measures.”