Spain opens electricity grid plan consultation

Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge opened a public consultation on May 21 on a third targeted modification to the country’s 2021-2026 electricity transmission network plan. The proposal does not reopen the entire plan. It targets a defined set of additions that the ministry said are aimed at improving grid resilience, managing power flows between southern and northern Spain, and lowering costs for consumers. The consultation matters because Spain’s transmission plan is the binding framework for Red Eléctrica’s network buildout. The current plan was approved by the government on March 22, 2022, with planned investment of 6.964 billion euros, and it has already been amended twice — in April 2024 and July 2025. (miteco.gob.es) ### Why is Spain changing the plan again now? MITECO said the new proposal follows a request from the system operator after recent analysis of grid conditions. The ministry cited stronger-than-expected south-to-north power flows linked to the concentration of new photovoltaic generation in Andalusia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. (ree.es) The public participation file says those flows have increased the need to dispatch combined-cycle gas plants through technical restrictions to keep the system stable when output changes and when cross-border schedules with France shift. MITECO said the cost of technical restrictions reached 3.351 billion euros in 2025. (miteco.gob.es) ### What exactly is in the proposal? MITECO said the draft modification includes four e-STATCOM compensators, which it said would improve damping against inter-area oscillations in the European power system. The ministry said those units would provide savings of more than 150 million euros a year, based on calculations by the system operator. (miteco.gob.es) The same proposal also adds 28 reactors and renews four others to support voltage control, according to the ministry. MITECO said those measures would generate annual savings of more than 250 million euros. Several additional actions at substations and network positions are also included, the ministry said, because they are linked to equipment already considered in the second targeted modification approved in July 2025 and arose during advanced technical implementation work. (miteco.gob.es) ### What does the law require before any change is approved? (miteco.gob.es) Spain’s Electricity Sector Law, Law 24/2013, allows targeted modifications to the transmission development plan under defined circumstances, including supply-security needs, new loads that can only be served from the transmission grid, economic-efficiency reasons and installations deemed critical for electrification or the energy transition. The same BOE notice says the change must go through a hearing process and receive reports from the National Commission on Markets and Competition, the affected autonomous communities and cities of Ceuta and Melilla, with the system operator also heard. Those reports must be issued within 15 days, according to the notice. ### Why does this consultation matter for on-the-ground works? (boe.es) Red Eléctrica said in 2022 that the transmission plan is the instrument through which the infrastructure needed to integrate new renewable generation is developed. In practice, changes at the planning stage can feed through into substation work, grid-position upgrades and related enabling packages once the final configuration is approved and engineered. The ministry has framed this third modification around equipment integrated into the transmission network rather than around a broad new corridor program. But the inclusion of substation and position works means the next implementation phase will depend on detailed project development at specific sites. That is an inference from the ministry’s description of the assets in scope and from how Spain’s binding transmission planning process operates. (ree.es) ### What happens next, and when? MITECO said interested parties can submit comments until June 11, 2026. After the consultation and the required reports, the proposal would move to the government approval stage under the procedure set out in the electricity law. (miteco.gob.es)