As of Tuesday, 24 May, Red Eléctrica de España will modify the scheduling processes for planning system operation to adapt them to a quarter-hourly scheduling model (i.e., every fifteen minutes), in accordance with European Regulation (EU) 2017/2195 on electricity balancing published on 23 November 2017. In this way, the Company will begin to use 15-minute periods for the allocation and settlement of the ancillary services of the Spanish peninsular electricity system, mechanisms used by the system operator to guarantee the constant security of the system and the balance between electricity demand and generation. 

The implementation of this new model will only have an impact on the system ancillary services and will in no way affect the calculation of the final price of energy (available on the Red Eléctrica website and via the redOS app). Additionally, this measure will not alter how prices are graphically displayed to the consumer, which will continue to be shown on an hourly basis, nor will it affect the operation of the day-ahead and intraday markets, which is managed by the market operator, OMIE. It will therefore have no impact on the calculation of the electricity bill of consumers.

The adaptation to the quarter-hourly schedule is the necessary preliminary step in order to connect the peninsular electricity system in 2024 to the platforms that manage the balancing services at European level and that will enable the use of international cross-border connections to be optimised and which seeks to generate the maximum possible efficiencies between all the European electricity systems.  

Red Eléctrica de España is taking this step to adapt its systems to this new model and to have the necessary technical tools to be able to face the future challenges derived from the integration of the Spanish system into the European internal energy market in a more efficient and agile manner. 

New demand curves for Spain, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla

Coinciding with this modification, the Company is launching four new real-time demand curves: national, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. These demand curves will be added to the 14 existing ones (the mainland electricity system, the Balearic Islands system, the systems of each of the 11 islands that make up the Balearic and Canary Islands archipelagos as well as the Lanzarote-Fuerteventura unified system), which show the behaviour of demand and electricity generation in real-time using instantaneous values which, as of 24 May, will be displayed every five minutes.

These curves, which can be consulted on the Company’s Real-time demand and generation webpage or via the redOS app or on the system operator's information portal eSIOS, show the demand forecasts (green line), the generation programmed to meet the demand (red line) and, finally, the actual demand (yellow line), in addition to the composition of the electricity generation mix as well as the tonnes of CO2 equivalent associated with each of the generation technologies.