In response to a news story published today regarding the costs of technical restrictions and their impact on electricity prices, Red Eléctrica wishes to clarify the following:

• Red Eléctrica, in its capacity as the system operator, does not create extra costs; rather, it applies the regulations governing ancillary services, and in particular the resolution of technical restrictions. It does so with a single objective: to ensure system security and electricity supply to all consumers within the regulatory security-cost balance, and to do so at the lowest price for consumers, in strict accordance with applicable legislation. 
• Technical restrictions are essential to adjust the generation mix cleared in the market to the system security principles established in the regulations, ensuring that what the market has previously agreed commercially, without taking into account the laws of physics or regulatory security criteria, can physically be delivered. 
• As the system operator has repeatedly explained, ancillary services – and technical restrictions in particular – are inherent to the system itself, having increased since 2021 in parallel with the transformation of the electricity system. 
• The cost of technical restrictions is not set by Red Eléctrica, but depends on: 1) the energy mobilised to resolve them, which in September increased by 40.8% compared with the same month last year; and 2) the prices offered and charged by generators, which for upward regulation energy in September rose by 61%. 
• In September, they offered and received payment for this upward energy at an average price of €293.44/MWh (weighted average price for upward technical restrictions), compared with the €143.25/MWh arithmetic average price on the day-ahead market. 
• From 1 January to 30 September, ancillary services for resolving technical restrictions and secondary regulation increased generators' revenues by €3.906 billion. 
• Specifically, over the past four weeks, the cost of electricity on the wholesale market has risen by 21.4%, whereas the cost of technical restrictions has fallen by 8.2%. 
• With regard to what is known as 'reinforced operation', in light of evidence of regulatory non-compliance and other improper conduct by certain market participants that triggered the blackout on 28 April 2025, the system operator has been applying a series of additional corrective measures. These were applied initially while awaiting the identification of the causes of the incident and, once identified, pending the implementation of the proposed measures to prevent a recurrence of the incident and/or to minimise its consequences should it happen again.
• In September, the cost of so-called 'reinforced operation' amounted to €8.8 million, which represents 2 euro cents a day for a standard user on the PVPC (Voluntary Price for the Small Consumer) tariff, with an average annual consumption of 300 kWh.
• Regarding the impact of technical restrictions as a whole (energy mobilised + prices offered by generators) on the PVPC, this is calculated in accordance with Royal Decree 216/2014, which was amended in 2023 specifically so that the forward price component could reduce the volatility of the final cost of energy in high-price scenarios. The underlying data used for this calculation are available to the general public in the PVPC files published at ESIOS. 
• The Active Demand Response Service (SRAD) is a specific balancing service delivered voluntarily by its providers and neither constitutes nor does it form part of reinforced operation.