The Government launches urgent processing of the Royal Decree with measures from the anti-blackout decree

The Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge has launched the urgent processing process, shortening deadlines, of the proposed Royal Decree approving certain urgent measures to strengthen the electrical system .

This regulatory project contains measures included in Royal Decree-Law 7/2025, which was rejected on July 22 in the Congress of Deputies. These measures can be enacted with a lower regulatory status and contribute to increasing the resilience of the electricity system and responding to the risks and opportunities of the ecological transition, the Ministry reported.

The text of the proposed Royal Decree will thus be open to comments until August 11, thus complying with the Council of Ministers' approval last Tuesday to begin urgent administrative processing.

Specifically, the Royal Decree seeks to urgently reinstate supervisory and control measures aimed at ensuring compliance with obligations by all stakeholders in the electricity sector. These measures were included in the Royal Decree Law that was voted on by the Lower House and which sought to implement a series of measures to prevent a situation like the peninsular electricity blackout of April 28.

This reestablishes the measures that had been proposed to empower the regulator, the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC), and the system operator, Red Eléctrica de España (REE), in their oversight and control duties.

To strengthen the system's technical management, it is proposed to enhance the supervisory functions of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC). The CNMC will be responsible for evaluating the voltage control obligations of those obliged to provide the service and preparing the corresponding report, which it will update every three months.

The regulator will also complete an extraordinary inspection plan for replacement capacities, with greater attention to self-starting facilities and distribution networks, which will be repeated every three years.

On the other hand, the system operator, Red Eléctrica , is tasked with developing proposals for regulatory changes regarding responses to power fluctuations, the rate of voltage variation, the scheduling of technical restrictions, and other technical elements that contribute to strengthening system security.

Likewise, Red Eléctrica is required to develop a new operating procedure to coordinate the development plans for the transmission and distribution networks, as well as 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 relevant bodies and, if appropriate, after the corresponding assessments, approved within six months.

The draft decree also facilitates the incorporation of energy storage into the electricity system, which is expected to reach a capacity of 22.5 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, according to the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) 2023-2030.

Thus, it includes specific technical provisions for hybridizing storage modules with generation facilities, prioritizing projects located within the land occupied by the original facility, which has already been anthropized.

To this end, it includes measures associated with the definition of installed capacity , changing the priority of dispatching facilities to avoid penalizing hybridization, and streamlining the processing of hybridization projects.

In order to boost electrification and thus more efficient use of existing networks, the regulatory proposal encourages the connection of new economic activities , primarily industrial ones, to the grid by setting the expiration of access and connection rights for demand five years after they are granted, with the aim of preventing hoarding and speculation.

Similarly, requests for access and connection on demand must identify the CNAE code of the activity to be carried out, which must be the same when the corresponding access and connection contract is subsequently signed.

Demand for electricity, for electric vehicle charging stations or for the tertiary and residential sectors, is also boosted by limiting the response times for distribution companies when implementing the network extensions required for new supplies: five days if the network does not require expansion, 30 days if such an extension is necessary, 60 days if a transformer station needs to be built, and 80 days maximum if several stations need to be built.

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

The proposal also modifies the authorization for platforms used to connect R&D&I generation or storage facilities, allowing them to obtain prior administrative authorization and administrative authorization for the construction of standard projects. This will mean that an operating authorization will be sufficient to disconnect a prototype and connect a new one.