Integration success leads to easy curtailment

An industry magazine puts a negative spin on a lot of positive developments in Spain as its newer government moves to control spiralling electricity costs that had been largely hidden in a tariff deficit.

Integration success leads to easy curtailment | Windpower Monthly:

... the control centre gives wind production more room for manoeuvre. Previously, the grid operator could order wind farms to stay offline hours ahead of its electricity schedule. During low demand periods, allowing all predicted wind power online could sometimes push flexible rapid-response gas offline, which would present a supply threat if wind finally fell short of expectations, as gas would be unable to bridge the gap. With the control centre, REE can now allow much larger amounts of wind to operate closer to the critical moment, temporarily reducing production if necessary rather than shutting down entire plants.
Being singled out for easy curtailment is only half of AEE's gripe. The other is that Spain - unlike Denmark and Germany — does not compensate generators for curtailed wind, despite wind having to pay for backup power from other technologies that enable nuclear, CHP, hydro and rapid-response gas to stay online. Cena says AEE is happy to help out the system, providing responsibilities and remuneration are spread evenly.
AEE admits that it is, of course, the centralised control that has enabled wind capacity and penetration to snowball over the years, a growth that is demanded by the EU's binding renewables objectives to 2020, by which date Spain is committed to reaching at least 35GW.

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