The costs of technical restriction and secondary regulation ancillary services accruing to generators reached a total of €4.35 billion from 1 January to 31 October 2026, while the total costs of the electricity system amount to €34.5 billion, according to data available today.

Ancillary services are regulated mechanisms inherent to the operation of the electricity system. They are neither an extra cost nor invisible, but rather one of the components of the cost of energy, just like the price negotiated on the markets, among other items. The main components include the costs of resolving technical restrictions, secondary regulation reserve, and the Active Demand Response Service (SRAD), with technical restrictions accounting for the largest share.

Red Eléctrica earns no revenue from these costs; as the system operator, its remuneration is regulated by the CNMC and does not depend on or derive from the energy mobilised. During this period, this remuneration amounted to €89.8 million, representing 0.27% of the overall costs of the system (€34.5 billion) over these nine months. 

The need for ancillary services has evolved in parallel with the intense transformation that the Spanish electricity system has been undergoing in recent years, with the massive integration of renewable energy (including self-consumption), among other changes; therefore, comparisons cannot be made with previous scenarios.

This trend has introduced new technical challenges for system operation, but it has also made a decisive contribution to decarbonising the electricity system and reducing energy prices for consumers. Over the past four years, since 2023, the addition of 36 GW of new renewable energy capacity and 7 GW of self-consumption connected to the grid has driven a reduction of more than 15% in the average final energy price.

Essential, regulated mechanisms whose cost is not set by Red Eléctrica

The main costs of ancillary services exceeded €4.688 billion in the year to 31 October, 36.1% more than in the same period last year. Of this amount, nearly €4 billion corresponded to resolving technical restrictions, €350 million to the secondary regulation reserve, and €338 million to the SRAD.

Technical restrictions are essential to adjust the generation mix cleared in the market to the established system security principles, and form part of a regulated process established by current legislation. They ensure that what the market has previously agreed commercially, without taking into account the laws of physics or regulatory security requirements, can physically be delivered.

As with all other ancillary services, the amount paid for technical restrictions is not set by Red Eléctrica. Instead, it reflects the remuneration for the energy offered and supplied by the participants in this mechanism, mainly electricity generators, which receive the resulting revenue.

Up to 31 October, the energy required to resolve technical restrictions had increased by 26.4% compared with the same period in 2025, as a result of the significant transformation of the electricity system. However, the cost of these measures for the demand side increased by 43.4% over the same period, due to the prices offered by market participants. In the first ten months of the year, they offered and received payment for this energy at an average price of €214.73/MWh (weighted average price for upward technical restrictions), compared with the €82.10/MWh arithmetic average price on the day-ahead market.

Furthermore, so-called 'reinforced scheduling' remained below €275 million in the first ten months of 2026, which represents 2 cents a day for a user on the PVPC tariff with an average monthly consumption of 300 kWh.