• The new interconnections with France and Portugal, the Extremadura-Andalusia axis, and the Majorca-Ibiza interconnection are the main projects for 2014.
• This will be in addition to the 747 kilometres of line commissioned in 2013.
• The Company last year signed 85 agreements of a social, environmental protection and educational nature.

This year Red Eléctrica plans to bring into service 650 kilometres of new electricity line. Most of these new infrastructures correspond to important projects geared at the structural strengthening of the transmission grid, as are the works of the new interconnections with France and Portugal, the Almaraz-Guillena axis between Extremadura and Andalusia, and the Majorca-Ibiza link.

Red Eléctrica’s investment in the construction of these infrastructures will exceed 1 billion euros for the period 2013-2014, consolidating the efforts made by the company, in accordance with its Strategic Plan, to develop an electricity transmission grid that is more robust, better meshed and better interconnected with neighbouring countries.

These investments are essential both to strengthen the security and quality of the electricity supply and to help integrate renewable energy and provide an efficient and competitive operation of the electricity market, thus helping to achieve the energy policy goals at a European level.

With this objective in mind, throughout 2013, Red Eléctrica already put into service 747 kilometres of new line of the transmission grid on the Spanish peninsula, of which 532 kilometres are 400 kV and 215 kilometres are 220 kV.

In addition to these investments, last year Red Eléctrica signed 85 collaboration agreements with its stakeholders in the areas where it operates. The agreements were signed with institutional, social, environmental and academic entities for the development of cultural and social projects as well as for environmental protection and the support for specialised training.

Of the collaborations signed with government administrations, 13 institutional agreements were signed with regional governments and 41 with councils, of which 16 are geared towards community support through projects of a social nature, and 25 are associated with the construction of new electricity infrastructures.

Interconnections

The new interconnection with France via the eastern Pyrenees, whose works will conclude later this year and which will become operational in 2015, will allow the commercial exchange capacity of electricity between the two countries to be doubled to 2,800 megawatts, reaching 6% of our installed generation capacity. This infrastructure will improve the security of the electricity system on the Spanish peninsula, will enable greater integration of renewable energy and will represent a savings in CO2 emissions of 2.3 million tonnes.

The Puebla de Guzmán-Portuguese border electricity line, which will be concluded this year, will increase the interconnection capacity between Spain and Portugal and will provide greater security through the connection to the Guillena substation, in Seville, and from there to the Brovales-Guillena line, that is also under construction. This is a 400 kilovolt (kV) infrastructure that will complete the Almaraz-Guillena axis and that will enable to link, from north to south, the electricity interconnections of Spain and Portugal via Extremadura and Andalusia, in addition to strengthening the transmission grid of the two autonomous communities.

The Majorca-Ibiza submarine electricity interconnection is one of the most noteworthy electricity infrastructures of Red Eléctrica for 2014 from the point of view of security of supply and the structuring of the territory, as it will link up the two Balearic Islands’ electricity systems and will connect them to both the Iberian and European electricity systems. With a total of 126 kilometres, it will be the longest submarine interconnection in alternating current in the world. This new link strengthens the electricity interconnection process between the Spanish peninsula and the Balearic Islands, which began with the Rómulo project, commissioned in August 2011 and which joined the Spanish peninsula with Majorca.