On December 28th 2023, Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, of December 27th, came into force, adopting measures to address the economic and social consequences arising from conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as to alleviate the effects of drought.
The publication of this Royal Decree-Law has brought about an unforeseen change in the development of renewable energy projects, including, in addition to the standard projects with photovoltaic and wind technologies, new ones such as storage and hydrogen.
One of the most relevant objectives that has been identified, is the once again flexibilization of two of the milestones of the Royal Decree 23/2020, of June 23rd. Specifically, an automatic extension of the deadline to obtain the Administrative Construction Authorization is introduced, from the 43 months established in Royal Decree-Law 5/2023, of June 28th, to 49 months. Consequently, the possibility of extending the deadline to obtain the Administrative Operating Authorization is also offered, for up to 8 years, or up to 9 years for pumping or offshore wind installations. This is intended to facilitate the integration of renewable power into the grid and to provide an incentive for projects under development to achieve their connection objectives, which may have been delayed due to certain administrative procedures.
Another purpose of this regulation is to promote self-consumption for large consumers, extending the release of 10% of the contest capacity for applications through the general procedure of temporal priority, to the nodes that have arisen from the entry into force of the Royal Decree-Law 6/2022, of March 29th. As a result, the window for this type of opportunities opens up to approximately 12GW.
On the other hand, although with less noticeable consequences, the criteria have been slightly relaxed to increase the number of nodes intended for contest. This would imply an intention to stagger the entry of projects into the grid, to avoid the uncontrolled and massive influx of new projects.
Although it may seem incongruent with past actions taken by the administration and misaligned with Royal Decree-Law 20/2022, of December 27th regarding the suspension of certain procedures for projects intended for contest nodes, the new Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 introduces an incentive in the form of additional scoring for those projects that have obtained the Environmental Impact Authorization and do not have access and connection permits yet. It could be understood, therefore, that the suspension introduced by RDL 20/2022 will end in June 2024. However, to prevent the administration from being overwhelmed with massive applications of projects that may never be realized, it would not be surprising to encounter a new extension of this suspension.
To also control access to demand, a mechanism is proposed whereby certain nodes of the transmission network can be called to a demand contest, as long as the amount of the consumption requests exceed the capacity for consumption, currently unknown, in that node. For stand-alone storage projects where generation and demand are evaluated in parallel and unrelated to each other, this potential lack of coordination between both requests could be lethal to their survival.
Finally, a new condition is introduced for demand access to the electricity grid. Those projects requesting access for consumption purposes at nodes of equal or greater voltage of 36 kV, will need, a guarantee of €20/kW. It is inferred that this requirement also applies to stand-alone storage facilities, that are considered generation facilities according to Royal Decree 1183/2020 but with demand behavior at certain times.
