Red Eléctrica de España (REE) calculates that the costs linked to adjustment services for technical constraints and secondary regulation have increased by 4,350 million euros the revenues of generating companies between January 1 and October 31, while the total costs of the electricity system stand at 34,500 million euros.
On the other hand, Redeia’s subsidiary stated that the so-called “reinforced scheduling” remains below 275 million euros in the first 10 months of the year, which is equivalent to about two cents per day for a consumer covered by the regulated tariff—the well-known PVPC—with an average monthly consumption of 300 kilowatt-hours (kWh).
In detail, the main costs of the adjustment services added up by October 31 to more than 4,688 million euros, which represents an increase of 36.1% compared with the same period of the previous fiscal year. Of that figure, around 4,000 million euros correspond to the resolution of technical constraints; 350 million euros to the secondary regulation reserve and 338 million euros to the Active Demand Response Service (SRAD).
The system operator emphasized that technical constraints are “essential” to adapt the dispatch mix in the market to the system security criteria established and respond to “a regulated process established by the current regulations.” “They make physically possible what the market has previously negotiated economically without considering the laws of physics or the regulatory criteria for safety,” it added.
Along these lines, it pointed out that, as with the other adjustment services, “the amount of the technical constraints is not set by Red Eléctrica, but corresponds to the remuneration of the energy offered and provided by the agents that participate in this mechanism, mainly electricity generators, which are the ones that receive the generated revenues.”
According to its data, the energy needed to address technical constraints has grown by 26.4% by the end of October compared with the same period in 2025, “as a result of the significant transformation of the electricity system,” stated the system operator, which, however, calculates that the cost of these actions for demand has increased by 43.4% in that same stretch, “due to the price offered by the agents”.
Energy prices mobilized in adjustment services
In the first ten months of the year, the agents offered and collected that energy at an average price of 214.73 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) (weighted average price of the upward constraints), compared with 82.10 euros/MWh for the arithmetic average price of the daily market.
Red Eléctrica stressed that the system adjustment services constitute “regulated and inherent” mechanisms for the operation of the electrical system and that “they do not constitute an additional cost nor are they invisible, but one of the components of the cost of energy, just like the price agreed in the markets, among other concepts”.
Likewise, it reiterated that these are items that “are not received by Red Eléctrica, as system operator, whose remuneration is regulated by the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) and does not depend on nor does it come from the energy dispatched”.
In this period, that regulated remuneration to the operator has been 89.8 million euros, equivalent to 0.27% of the total system costs (34.500 million euros) in these nine months.
In addition, the company assessed that demand for adjustment services “has evolved in parallel with the intense transformation that the Spanish electrical system has been undergoing in recent years with the massive incorporation of renewable energy (including self-consumption), among other changes, so no comparisons can be made with earlier scenarios”.