Enel Green Power handed EUR-4.9m fine in grid access dispute in Spain

June 15 (Renewables Now) - Spain’s market regulator CNMC said on Tuesday that it has slapped a EUR-4.9-million (USD 5.1m) fine on renewables developer Enel Green Power for unduly taking up capacity at two nodes on the power grid to the detriment of other petitioners seeking shared access to the same points.

While Enel Green Power was named as the perpetrator of the wrongdoing, its parent company, Spanish utility Endesa SA (BME:ELE), was also found to be jointly liable, CNMC said.

According to the regulator, Enel Green Power abused its dominant position as the so-called “single node interlocutor” at the Tajo de la Encantada 220-kV and Lastras 400-kV nodes, when it was supposed to act as the representative of all renewable energy promoters interested in these points. The single node interlocutor role entails arranging and coordinating all requests for grid access via specific nodes before submitting them to Spain’s grid operator Red Electrica de Espana (REE).

Enel Green Power instead prioritised its own requests to hook power plants, and put off submitting applications from its competitors to REE, effectively denying them access to the nodes, CNMC said.

“As a result, there was not a fair and equitable distribution of the capacity available at the node at that time, and Enel Green was able to monopolise more capacity than it would have been entitled to, which in turn prevented competing companies from having the capacity they needed and which was the reason for their request for access,” CNMC said in its resolution to impose a fine.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.048)