Spain has become one of Europe’s cheapest power markets

alecco

> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nuclear power plants shut down due to negative prices so their reliable stable power wasn't a pacemaker anymore and it blew up in their faces. And this was a topic on TV shows with several experts alerting of this FOR MONTHS before the blackout. Sure, there are new technologies to stabilize solar and wind's fluctuating outputs but they are no just plug and play. Those are very, very complex systems that take years to set up properly. While there are nuclear power plants are just there collecting dust because the EU pressured Spain to make them unprofitable to maintain so they would be shut down. Luckily, the US-Israel-Iran war made the EU leadership turn and now they want nuclear. I hope it's not too late.

PaulKeeble

The past few years has also had Solar continuing to decrease in price so its increasingly going to be the primary choice. On top of that battery prices have been plummeting too so that now Solar + battery is cheaper than other options like Nuclear and especially Gas. Most of the EU will be running on Wind and Solar in the coming years, its a change that is now rapidly occuring based entirely on the rare economics. Solar and Wind are half the price of anything else.

pyrale

The author's point is that Spain's electricity is very cheap compared to other European countries thanks to its great electricity mix, etc. The reality is that Spain's electricity is cheap because it is relatively insulated from Europe's core network, because its interconnections with other countries are limited. In financial words, there is a spread with the rest of Europe because the ways to arbitrage that spread are extremely limited. If Spain was located near Germany and well interconnected, their prices would look like Germany's. And while cheap energy is pictured by op as a good thing, Spain understands very well that higher prices are good for its renewables industry, and is pressing for more interconnections[1]. The overall tone of the article feels like the author is here to extoll the virtues of renewables. [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/8e94079c-585f-11e4-b331-00144feab...

mono442

The reality is that expensive electricity in the EU is by design. The EU ETS imposes heavy taxes on fossil fuels (and they are set to increase even more), which in turn causes the price of electricity to rise. Fully renewable electricity generation is still a long way off, so this will continue for a long time. But it is entirely a self-imposed political problem and could easily be fixed by getting rid of the EU ETS or capping the price of emissions at a more reasonable level.

TheGuyWhoCodes

Spain is one of the largest buyers of Russian LNG [1], even doubled in March compared to February 2026 and has been linked to servicing "shadow fleet" tankers carrying Russian oil [2]. Moral bankruptcy. [1] https://cepa.org/article/spains-baffling-russian-gas-addicti... [2] https://kyivindependent.com/spain-escorts-shadow-fleet-vesse...

sunk1st

Maybe it's cheap compared to other European countries but that doesn't mean it's cheap. Electricity in Spain is expensive.

iamkrazy

Shhhh.... Don't let Sam Altman find out.

hokkos

Jan Rosenow doesn't know what he is talking about, power markets are not only day ahead market, but there are a lot of other maturities, CAL27 is higher in Spain than France or the Nordics. https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/market-data-hub

gregwebs

I think Spain is showing that majority renewables can work, if you are willing to work through the pain. Someone needs to lead the way and figure out how to make it work, so I am glad they are doing it. I do think this article and most information is focused on cheer-leading rather than telling it like it is. This title of the article is misleading. Spain is one of the cheapest power generation markets, but In the article it states "Spanish households pay above the EU average". Then the reason is stated "Other system costs are rising. The flip side of getting energy cheap is paying more elsewhere to keep the system stable.". Spain of course also had a blackout and the article states "every country in Europe needs to modernise how it handles voltage stability". I believe that's code for "its harder to manager power transmission grids with renewables". I have been told by a power engineer that read the report on the blackout that the authors are going out of their way not to explicitly blame renewables, but these things that caused the blackout are bigger issues now due to the switch to renewables. But it makes sense for Spain to continue down this path and not pollute with coal or rely on other countries for gas imports.

j16sdiz

Power grid is the limiting factor, not power plant. Transporting energy can cost more than generating them.