The Spanish Government approves RDL 7/2025, which introduces new measures to bolster the electricity system

On 24 June 2025, the Spanish Government approved Royal Decree-Law 7/2025, of 24 June, approving urgent measures to bolster the electricity system (RDL 7/2025). RDL 7/2025 was published in the Official State Gazette on 25 June and came into force on the same day. It must now be validated by Spanish Congress within 30 days, otherwise it will be rendered void.

RDL 7/2025 introduces a large number of legal and regulatory modifications, with very different objectives, which are intended to contribute to strengthening the electricity system, in view of the conclusions reached by the Committee set up to analyse the circumstances surrounding the electricity blackout that took place on 28 April 2025 in its report released on 17 June 2025.

The main contents of RDL 7/2025 are analysed below (you can download the ebulletin in pdf, here):

Legal regime applicable to shared power evacuation infrastructure

RDL 7/2025 amends article 21.5 of the Spanish Electricity Sector Law 24/2013, of 26 December (LSE), developing the legal regime applicable to shared power evacuation infrastructure. Specifically:

• It reiterates that power evacuation infrastructures (composed of connections to the transmission or distribution networks and, as applicable, the transformation of electrical energy) are part of a power generation facility and, likewise, of the storage facilities that inject energy into the grid.
• It establishes that, when several generation facilities and storage facilities use shared evacuation infrastructures to discharge at the same position in a transmission or distribution substation, the owners "shall be jointly and severally liable to the electricity system for any event, request, act or omission in their duties that occurs or is triggered at the shared power evacuation infrastructures with regard to the electricity system".
• Notwithstanding this joint and several liability, the same owners must sign an agreement that includes the distribution of liabilities among them – it is not possible to transfer that liability to other individuals or undertakings or to exclude any of the owners from liability^[1].
• This agreement must be signed and notified to the competent administrative body before obtaining prior administrative authorisation. If that authorisation has already been granted, the agreement must be submitted within one year of RDL 7/2025 entering into effect^[2].
• Likewise, the agreement signed must be updated and notified to the competent public authorities each time a new owner makes use of the shared infrastructure.
• Failure to submit this agreement will result in liability being distributed among the different owners in proportion to the access capacity stated in their respective grid access and connection permits.

Boost for storage

RDL 7/2025 incorporates various provisions aimed at promoting the development and start-up of storage facilities. Specifically:

• The declaration of public utility (and resulting possibility of expropriating the land necessary for establishment, including power evacuation infrastructures) provided for in article 54.1 LSE is extended to storage facilities.
• It has been declared that authorisation procedures for hybrid storage projects under the jurisdiction of the General State Administration are urgent (therefore reducing application deadlines by half), provided that they do not require an ordinary environmental impact statement^[3] or a declaration of public utility.
• Furthermore, the hybridisation of electrochemical storage facilities with generation facilities that already have a grid access and connection permit will be exempt from environmental assessment when processed by the General State Administration if (i) the storage facility is located within the same polygonal area of the generation facility and (ii) the latter has already received a favourable environmental impact statement. If this exemption does not apply, and the hybridisation project is subject to an environmental impact assessment or any other simplified process that replaces it, the assessment will be limited to the potential impact resulting from the modification compared to the original project.
• As will be explained below, the criterion for determining the maximum power of the hybridised facility is amended to avoid the procedural complications triggered by competence being attributed automatically to the General State Administration, which until now occurred if the addition of storage modules increased aggregate power in excess of 50 MW.
• In any event, the authorisation procedure for hybrid storage projects has been simplified when processed by the General State Administration. Thus: i) prior administrative authorisation and administrative authorisation for construction will be processed and decided upon jointly; ii) the public consultation process and the submission of the construction project to the different public authorities, bodies or, where appropriate, public service or general interest service companies will be made simultaneously; and iii) once the procedure has been completed, the energy department must submit the procedure to the Directorate General for Energy Policy and Mines for a decision within 15 days.
• Temporary emergency generation and storage facilities that are necessary for security of supply (which must be justified by means of a report from the system operator) and that are not located in special protection zones may obtain directly, without requiring prior administrative authorisation, a construction authorisation known as an autorización de implantación (implementation authorisation) and a subsequent operating permit for a period of three years, which may be extended twice for the same period of time.
• The order of priority of dispatch contemplated in Annex XV of Royal Decree 413/2014, of 6 June, which regulates the electricity production from renewable energy sources, cogeneration and waste, is amended to avoid it disincentivising the incorporation of storage in renewable energy facilities. It is established that, when curtailment is used, priority of evacuation will be in the following order: a) facilities using renewable energy sources, including those that incorporate storage that does not consume energy from the grid and those that consume energy from the grid and have an installed capacity of the storage module equal to or less than the installed capacity of the renewable energy generation module; b) high-efficiency cogeneration facilities; c) other technologies^[4]. REE has confirmed the application of this provision since 1 July 2025
• Article 33.13 LSE is amended to state that "grid access and connection permits for storage facilities shall be flexible access permits from a demand perspective". It does not appear, however, that this provision will have an immediate material impact because, strictly speaking, flexible grid access permits for demand are still pending regulatory implementation, as stated in the First Transitional Provision of National Markets and Competition Commission's (CNMC) Circular 1/2024 of 27 September, which establishes the methodology and conditions for access and connection by electricity demand facilities to the transmission and distribution networks.
• Article 39.3 LSE is amended to clarify that, for the purposes therein, hybrid or standalone storage facilities that consume electricity from the grid^[5] are not classified as consumers (it should be remembered that this provision classifies facilities intended for more than one consumer as distribution networks – and imposes a resulting obligation of assignment to the area distributor).
• It is clarified that the demand-side grid access permits for storage facilities are not subject to the ordinary expiry regime applicable to demand permits (to which reference will be made later). Demand-side grid access permits for storage facilities will only expire when the generation access permit for the same facility expires. Similarly, the bond linked to the demand access permit will be cancelled when the bond linked to the generation access permit is cancelled.

Boost for repowering

RDL 7/2025 regulates the repowering of production facilities in service. It defines repowering (almost literally transposing the definition of article 2.10 of Directive 2018/2001, of 11 December 2018, on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources) as "the renewal" of facilities, which will include "the total or partial replacement of facilities or operating systems and equipment, with the aim of replacing machines, improving efficiency, increasing the energy produced by the facility, increasing the installed capacity or with all or several of the aforementioned objectives".

The following is established for these cases of repowering:

• The substantive and environmental processing periods for procedures initiated since the entry into force of RDL 7/2025 are halved, provided that repowering entails an increase of less than 25% of the original installed capacity.
• If the repowering is subject to environmental assessment or any other simplified process that replaces it, the environmental assessment will be limited to the potential impact that the modification entails compared to the original project.

New criterion for determining the maximum power of generation facilities for the purposes of the administrative authorisation

RDL 7/2025 orders the Spanish Government to approve, within 12 months, a royal decree modifying the definition of the installed capacity of energy generation and/or storage facilities, for the sole purpose of the administrative authorisations (prior, construction and operation authorisations) required.

However, RDL 7/2025 establishes a series of rules that will apply until this royal decree is approved:

• As a general rule, the power of a facility made up of one or several asynchronous power modules or electrochemical storage modules that are connected to the grid through the same inverter or set of inverters will be equal to the maximum power of the latter. If, in addition, a synchronous generation module is part of the facility, its installed power shall be added to the above value.
• For this purpose, the maximum power of an inverter shall be the maximum active power it is capable of producing in steady state. Limitations that may be applied to the inverter by means of firmware or other programmable/modulatable control systems will be ignored, except where the limitation is made by the inverter manufacturer and is accredited with a certificate issued by the manufacturer that identifies the inverter with the model, manufacturer and assigned project or serial number^[6].
• In any case, when there are different inverter maximum power values depending on the temperature range or value at which it operates, the maximum power will be taken as the value at 40°C or, if this temperature does not appear in the manufacturer's specifications, at the nearest lower temperature.

RDL 7/2025 stipulates that these rules shall apply to all facilities in the pipeline that have not yet obtained a definitive operating authorisation. However, where procedures have already started and the application of these criteria would result in a change to the public authority responsible for handling the procedure, they will continue to be handled by the public authority that was handling them at the time. If, in such cases, the developer decides to withdraw the procedure to restart it with the public authority that is now competent, the bonds that have been furnished will not be enforced^[7].

Grid access and connection permits for generation: extension of milestones, modification of the final milestone and suspension of the calculation if interim measures are adopted

A number of amendments have been made in relation to the expiry milestones for grid access and connection permits for generation facilities defined in article 1 of Royal Decree-Law 23/2020, of 23 June, approving measures in the energy sector and other areas for economic reactivation. Specifically:

• The final milestone is linked to obtaining the provisional administrative operating authorisation for testing (not definitive, as up to now), obtainment of which, as will be explained below, is established as mandatory for generation and storage facilities.
• Holders of all grid access and connection permits granted after the entry into force of the LSE and up to the entry into force of RDL 7/2025 may request, once administrative construction authorisation has been obtained for the respective facility, an extension of the deadline to comply with the final milestone up to a maximum of eight years (12 years in the case of hydraulic pumping facilities^[8]). Notwithstanding the above, in the case of grid access and connection permits for which the deadline expired on 25 June 2025, it is automatically extended until 25 September 2025^[9].
• The extension may be requested within two months of the entry into force of RDL 7/2025 or of obtaining the administrative construction authorisation, whichever is later^[10]. The application must indicate the six-month period of the calendar year in which the facility will obtain the provisional administrative operating permit for testing and include an express commitment to accept that it will not be possible to obtain the provisional or definitive administrative operating permit, nor to obtain prior or definitive registration in the administrative register of electricity production facilities before the aforementioned six-month period starts.
• In addition, within that period of two months from the entry into force of RDL 7/2025, the owners of generation facilities and storage facilities that have obtained a milestone extension under article 28 of Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 of 27 December may modify the six-month period selected, bringing it forward or pushing it backward (but, evidently, without exceeding the limit of eight years referred to above).
• Finally, it is possible to suspend the calculation of the administrative milestones defined in article 1 of Royal Decree-Law 23/2020, of 23 June, if interim measures have been adopted in the context of an administrative or contentious-administrative appeal to suspend the effectiveness of the administrative authorisations granted to the project. This provision (which is also applicable to cases of presumed suspension in the event of an administrative appeal under article 117.3 of Law 39/2015, of 1 October) requires the developer to provide evidence of the aforementioned suspension to the network manager that granted the grid access and connection permit and the body responsible for granting the administrative authorisations – to do so it must send them the notification from the body that adopted the administrative or judicial interim measure, or, as appropriate, the certification of presumptive suspension pursuant to article 117.3 of Law 39/2015, of 1 October, of the Common Administrative Procedure applicable to the Public Administration. If the interim measure is lifted, the developer is obliged to notify those same bodies thereof within three months of receiving notification – otherwise it will be subject to the automatic expiry of the grid access and connection permits.

New regulation governing administrative operating authorisations: two-phase process for generation and storage facilities

RDL 7/2025 amends the system for granting administrative operating authorisations. It establishes that, in the case of generation and storage facilities, those authorisations will be granted in two phases: a provisional operating authorisation for testing, followed by a definitive operating authorisation^[11] (in the case of other facilities, the definitive operating authorisation may be applied for directly or, optionally, the same two-phase process may be followed).

The provisional operating authorisation for testing generation and storage facilities is regulated in a new article 132 ter of Royal Decree 1955/2000, of 1 December, which regulates the transmission, distribution, commercialisation, supply and authorisation procedures for electricity facilities. It establishes that the authorisation must cover both the generation plant and its power evacuation infrastructure up to the connection to the transmission or distribution grid and, where appropriate, the transformation of electrical energy. In that regard, it establishes that, when several production facilities feed off power at the same connection point and share a part of the power evacuation infrastructure, if one facility wishes to obtain an operating authorisation before the facility that includes the shared infrastructure does, a partial provisional operating authorisation for testing the shared power evacuation infrastructure may be issued in the name of the owner of the former.

A new article 132 quater of Royal Decree 1955/2000 regulates administrative operating authorisations. It establishes that applications for those authorisations must be accompanied, when required, by a final operational notification (FON); the same provision is reproduced concerning the instrumental granting of the provisional operating authorisation for testing the shared power evacuation infrastructure when necessary.

Access and connection permits for demand: new provisions regarding expiry

A number of amendments have been made in relation to grid access permits for demand, primarily related to the terms of their expiry^[12]. Specifically:

• The regime of expiry for demand access permits is extended to all permits granted at voltages equal to or greater than 1 kV (until now, those granted at voltages below 36 kV were not subject to expiry, which they now are, although they remain exempt from the requirement to submit bonds^[13]). This expiry regime will also apply to permits at voltages of less than 36 kV that have already been granted, although the five-year period that has not been established will count from the entry into force of RDL 7/2025.
• As such, expiry will occur: i) if, within five years of the permit having been granted, the permit holder fails to sign a grid access contract for a contracted capacity that, in any period (not necessarily in period P1, as previously established), reaches at least 50% of the access capacity granted in the access permit; and ii) if, once the contract has been signed, the access capacity is not maintained, for an identical or higher capacity, for at least three years.
• Irrespective of the above, if the greater power for which the initial access contract is signed is less than the access capacity granted (even if it reaches 50%), the grid access permit will automatically expire in respect of the difference between the two values^[14].
• Furthermore, when the three-year period during which the capacity established in the access contract must be maintained elapses, if the contract is terminated or the contracted capacity is reduced and this situation continues for more than five years (high voltage) or three years (low voltage), the permit will also expire due to the capacity that has remained unused^[15].
• Finally, new cases have been defined that determine that the power demand facility is not considered to be "the same" for the purposes of retaining grid access and connection permits. Specifically, and apart from the location thereof moving to a distance of more than 10 kilometres from the geometric centre of the facility (already contemplated previously), two other cases have been added: i) when the CNAE (National Classification of Economic Activities) associated with the facility is modified and the change affects the second level of coding^[16]; and ii) if access capacity is reduced by more than 50% of the capacity that was granted originally.

Flexibility in electricity planning and demand-side connection

Important new features are introduced regarding electricity planning, with the aim of making its development more flexible, allowing it to adapt more quickly to the reality of the electricity system. New provisions are also added aimed at making the creation of positions for demand supply more flexible. Specifically:

• Although six-year planning is maintained, planning must now be reviewed every three years, whereby a new planning process would start on that date.
• The Spanish Government must approve a specific modification to transmission grid development plans every two years^[17], if the qualifying factors (which remain unchanged) established in article 4.4 LSE are met. To this end, the reports that must be issued by the CNMC, Autonomous Regions and Autonomous Cities must be submitted within 15 days and will be understood as being favourable when that period has elapsed.
• The System Operator must submit a report to the Secretary of State for Energy every four months on the transmission grid nodes at which it is possible to include positions to supply demand in the transmission grid development plan. The Secretary of State for Energy has powers, where it is physically possible to do so and without exceeding the number of positions in each substation, to issue a resolution incorporating new demand positions or repurposing existing positions. If so, if a demand-side tender is launched at that node due to insufficient positions, the tender will be cancelled and the grid access and connection permits will be awarded in chronological order.
• A new article 13 bis is added to Royal Decree 1183/2020, of 29 December, on access and connection to electricity transmission and distribution networks, detailing the specific deadlines within which distributors must perform developments to the network necessary to connect new supplies, as well as the deadlines within which they must issue their opinion on projects submitted by other companies to perform the work (as permitted by current regulations), as well as for the validation of the facilities once they have been built.
• Finally, the Spanish Government is expected to approve, within 12 months, a royal decree that will allow, under certain conditions, a distributor to develop a network that allows other consumers to be supplied by the transmission grid to which a consumer is already connected^[18].

Reduction in the number of equivalent hours in 2025 applicable to plants eligible for the specific remuneration regime

RDL 7/2025 establishes a 25% reduction in the number of minimum equivalent operating hours and the operating threshold set for the various standard facilities entitled to the specific remuneration scheme. The measure is intended to remedy the fact that, when these values were set in Order TED/741/2023, it was impossible to foresee the high number of hours at negative prices in the spring of 2025 (which has had a direct impact on compliance with these minimum values and, therefore, on plant remuneration).

Other provisions related to the electricity sector

RDL 7/2025 includes a series of provisions of varying content and scope, of which we highlight the following:

• Article 7 LSE is amended to identify the authorities that are competent for the approval of capacity mechanisms (Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, following a resolution by the Government Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs) and to establish, for these purposes, the lost load value and reliability standard (the Director General for Energy Policy and Mines)^[19].
• Various mandates are given to the CNMC in relation to the supervision and inspection of compliance with voltage control obligations and the replacement capacities of the entities of the electricity system that are respectively obliged to do so.
• Various mandates are included for the System Operator regarding the analysis and review, including a potential regulatory proposal, of various aspects of the operation of the system that were apparently related to the national blackout that took place on 28 April 2025.
• The Council of Ministers has been instructed to approve a list of specific actions aimed at enhancing voltage control, stability in the event of power fluctuations and to bolster the resilience of the electricity system.
• The Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge is given powers to modify, on an annual basis, the penalty for non-compliance with the power factor control adjustment service, regulated in Annex III of Royal Decree 413/2014, of 6 June.
• The Secretariat of State for Energy is designated as the competent body for approving the report on system flexibility needs aimed at the potential introduction of non-fossil fuel flexibility incentives, in accordance with article 19(e) of Regulation (EU) 2019/943 of 5 June 2019.
• The Council of Ministers is given powers to modify the list of Fair Transition Hubs, including not only those at which power is evacuated from thermal power plants that have already or are due to close, but also those located in the same area of electricity influence or within a radius of 50 kilometres.
• A special authorisation regime is established for platforms of R&D&I generation and storage facilities^[20], making it possible for general authorisations to be granted for a standard project, subject to certain technical parameters, whereby connection or disconnection of new plug-in prototypes can only take place with the operating authorisation (if they comply with these predetermined parameters and are located in eligible areas).
• The legal regime for aggregation services is implemented partially, introducing a new article 49 bis LSE which details the rights and obligations of independent aggregators. However, this legal implementation is incomplete, and the regulatory definition of the aggregation model is still pending.
• In the case of self-consumption from photovoltaic facilities located on the roof of one or several buildings, on industrial land or on existing or future artificial structures the primary purpose of which is not the generation of electricity, the maximum radius is increased to five kilometres, provided that the power of the generation facility does not exceed 5 MW.
• A single consumer is now able to simultaneously register for individual self-consumption without compensation for surplus energy produced and self-consumption via the grid with compensation for the surplus energy produced. The Explanatory Memorandum gives as an example that it would be possible, in this way, for an industrial plant to have its own self-consumption facility and, at the same time, to be associated on a self-consumption basis with a nearby generation facility located in the same industrial estate or in the surrounding area.
• It creates the role of self-consumption managers, who are the individuals or entities who represent consumers in the context of self-consumption.
• The system for authorising electricity infrastructure to supply recharging stations from the distribution or transmission grid has been simplified. As a result, if they do not require a declaration of public utility or an environmental impact assessment, it will suffice for them to be powered by submitting a construction project and a statement on compliance with industrial quality and safety regulations.
• The mechanism for boosting the competitiveness of electricity-intensive industry has been rolled over until 31 December 2025, with an 80% rebate on access tariffs.
• Measures are introduced to encourage the inclusion of aerothermal and geothermal facilities in condominium buildings, also making it possible for local councils to establish Property Tax and Construction, Facilities and Works Tax rebates for installations of this kind.

 

[1] It is difficult to interpret the provision, where a regime of joint and several liability coexists with the added inclusion of liability quotas. It could be understood that the legislator has tried to replicate (at least as far as the electricity system is concerned) the liability regime applicable to the members of a joint venture (agrupación de interés económico): joint and several liability towards the electricity system and several liability internally and towards other third parties (establishing certain limits and a general default rule – grid access capacity – as regards the internal apportionment of liability).

[2] RDL 7/2025 does not contain any provision of transitional law in this regard. A prudent approach would be to understand that this obligation is applicable to all facilities with prior administrative authorisation, including, therefore, those already in operation.

[3] It should be remembered that stand-alone energy storage facilities using electrochemical batteries, as well as hybrid storage facilities, whatever their technology, in principle only require a simplified environmental assessment, in accordance with letter n) of Group 4 of Annex II of Law 21/2013, of 9 December, on environmental assessment.

[4] This modification of the order of priority for dispatch was included, albeit in different terms (distinguishing five levels of priority), in the draft Royal Decree amending Royal Decree 413/2014, of 6 June, which the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge submitted for public consultation on 27 December 2024. The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), in its report of 4 March 2025, IPN/CNMC/043/24, suggested simplifying the order of priority, reducing the number of categories to four. The wording approved in RDL 7/2025 ventures further in this simplification, establishing three categories.

[5] The clarification is somewhat surprising, as, according to the definition of consumer contained in article 6 LSE, it already seemed obvious that this condition was not applicable to storage facilities. That being the case, other provisions of the LSE (14.10 and 49.1) referred to "consumers and operators of storage facilities". The Explanatory Memorandum states that the purpose is to "afford greater legal certainty", limiting the application of article 39.3 LSE to "pure consumers".

[6] This legal provision entails a modification or qualification of the criteria published months ago by the competent Ministry on its website, which indicated that the power of the inverter would be "the nominal power (active power)" that it was "capable of bearing in a permanent state", ignoring possible limitations due to "firmware".

[7] As mentioned above, these new rules bring an end to the transfer of competences that in many cases (by taking into account the aggregate power of the different generation modules) resulted from the hybridisation of a facility during the processing phase of the original plant.

[8] In the case of offshore wind facilities, the maximum period of nine years set by Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, of 27 December, adopting measures to address the economic and social impact of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as to mitigate the effects of drought, remains unchanged.

[9] This option to extend had already been afforded to permits granted since 1 January 2018, in Royal Decree-Law 8/2023 of 27 December. RDL 7/2025 extends this possibility to those granted after the entry into force of the LSE and until 31 December 2017.

[10] This provision allows for two exceptions: i) in the case of facilities affected by automatic extension until 25 September 2025, the application may be submitted until that date; and ii) in the case of hydro pumped storage (and offshore wind, where applicable), the application may be submitted at any time prior to the expiry of the final milestone.

[11] This amendment was announced in the 2025 Annual Regulatory Plan, in which reference was made to the processing of a "Royal Decree regulating the procedure for the authorisation of electricity facilities", with a special mention to updating provisions regulating operating authorisations.

[12] These modifications have, to a large extent, afforded regulatory status to the considerations raised by the CNMC in relation to distribution grid permits in its Report on the CNMC's Resolution of 8 June 2025 establishing the detailed specifications for the determination of firm access capacity for demand to electricity distribution networks (RDC/DE/002/25), and extending them to both transmission grid and distribution grid permits..

[13] With regard to posting bonds, RDL 7/2025 clarifies that, in the case of storage facilities, they must be submitted to the competent administration for authorisation.

[14] In other words, and by way of example: if a demand access permit is granted for 100 MW, the permit will automatically expire if a grid access contract for at least 50 MW is not signed in any of the periods within five years. However, if an access contract for 60 MW is signed, the permit will partially expire in respect of the unused 40 MW (thus reducing it to 60 MW).

[15] Further to the above example, if after three years the contracted capacity is reduced to 50 MW for five years, the additional 10 MW not "used" would be forfeited. If the access contract terminates in full and this endures for five years, the permit would expire completely.

[16] The CNAE codes are defined in Royal Decree 10/2025 of 14 January. It is understood that changes would only be admissible at the third and fourth level (i.e. third or fourth digit of the CNAE).

[17] This possibility already existed previously but was not subject to a specific periodicity.

[18] This measure would overcome the restrictions imposed by the application of article 39.3 LSE in relation to the impossibility to connect more than one consumer at positions of the transmission grid.

[19] The Ministry had already submitted the proposed Order for the creation of a capacity market and the proposed Resolution establishing the value of lost load and the flexibility standard to public consultation.

[20] This may be of particular relevance to experimental offshore wind power.

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