The Council of Ministers next Tuesday will approve the reform of the regulated price in the electricity market, known as the PVPC, as confirmed this Thursday by the Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera.
The new regulated price calculation system seeks to separate the price paid by final consumers from the volatility to which the daily price of energy is exposed. To this end, it will be applied gradually from 2024 so that system operators have a reasonable amount of time to adapt to these changes. “This new reality, much safer and much less volatile”, pointed out the minister when she arrived at the inauguration of the III Summit of Self-consumption and Energy Communities of the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF).
The new PVPC will no longer be 100% indexed to the daily market price and will gradually begin to incorporate references from the futures markets, in line with the document that the Ministry released to public information and which included the recommendations for improvement that were received. of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC). In other words, the weight of futures market prices in 2023 will be 25%, in 2004 40% and the final 55% will be reached in 2025. “With the little interconnection that Spain has, it is convenient that the regulated rate had some modulating factors linked to the price of electricity in the medium and long term”, commented the minister.
In this way, the Government complies with the commitment imposed by Brussels to reform the regulated price of electricity that it required when Spain received permission to implement the Iberian exception.
An exception, which Ribera has assured this Thursday that it will be maintained until the end of the year, like the rest of the extraordinary measures.
Last Monday, the European Commission published a report in which it considers it unnecessary and harmful for countries to continue applying a cap on the income of inframarginal energies such as nuclear and renewable energies and called for their end.
For Ribera, the Brussels proposal is a sign of “an optimistic scenario regarding Europe’s ability to transform its energy model and defend the need to reduce dependence on markets from Russia.”
But he has assured that although the Spanish government will take these recommendations into account, there is no intention of dismantling the current consumer protection package at this time, and that it will be reviewed at the end of the year. “I hope it does not need to be applied as has happened with the Iberian solution in recent months due to the fall in natural gas prices,” he pointed out.