- At the beginning of July there were more than 200,000 individual and collective installations operating in its network.
- In the first six months of the year, Endesa's subsidiary, e-distribución, activated more self-consumption than in the whole of 2022.
- Improvements were proposed to the regulator to streamline procedures, which will enable customer-distributor contracts to be adapted in 10 days.
Endesa's Networks subsidiary, e-distribución, tripled the number of collective self-consumption points activated in its distribution network in just six months. Between the end of 2022 and the beginning of July this year, collective installations in the Endesa network went from 161 to 488, representing an increase of 200%. Between collective and individual installations, e-distribución has already managed the connection of more than 200,000 self-consumption points in Spain. To simplify the regulatory procedure for activating these installations, which consumers often find to be complex, improvements were proposed to the regulator to streamline procedures and adapt customer-distributor contracts within 10 days.
Collective installations are the latest to enjoy the boom in self-consumption in Spain and are expected to continue to increase very significantly in the future, although they are still a minority. Data provided by the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE in Spanish) indicate that about 72% of family homes correspond to flats, so this modality will play an increasingly important role. The nearly 500 collective installations active in Endesa's network provide electricity to a total of 2,436 customers, three times more than at the end of last year. However, the vast majority of self-consumption currently managed in the Endesa network is individual (198,240).
The more than 200,000 self-consumption installations active in the network operated by Endesa in Andalusia, Extremadura, Catalonia, Aragón, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, have a combined installed capacity of 3 GW. Almost 99% are self-consumption with surpluses, which inject the energy they have left over into the network and the remaining 1% are self-consumption without surpluses. By area, Andalusia and Catalonia concentrate 84% of active self-consumption in the e-distribución management area, with about 90,400 and 78,000 active self-consumption points, respectively. The Canary Islands have close to 10,000, twice as many as at the end of last year, and Aragón has nearly 7,400, with an increase of 84% in the first six months of the year. Endesa's network in the Balearic Islands has about 11,670 active self-consumption points, 81% more than at the end of 2022.
Between 1 January and the beginning of July this year, e-distribución connected 85,000 self-consumption points in Spain which is more than the 81,800 managed in the whole of the previous year and almost 3.5 times more than in 2021. At the current rate, Endesa's networks will reach 270,000 supply points with activated self-consumption by the end of the year. This development enables us to anticipate that this year all records will be broken again in the advancement of this technology which has obliged all the agents involved to adapt to the strong increase in requests.
Improvements in the regulatory procedure
The processing of self-consumption is a regulated process involving a number of agents and it can be a complex procedure for consumers, so much so that many activations are delayed, especially with regard to shared self-consumption.
The distributors are directly involved in accessing and connecting to the grid, a regulated procedure in which they operate following the principle of neutrality.
Even though the increase in the number of active self-consumption units shows that companies in the sector have made great efforts to respond to the explosion in demand, Endesa is still committed to working in two directions in order to improve the process. Firstly, by proposing to the regulator (CNMC) improvements in the operations between agents (retailers and distributors) that will simplify and streamline the procedures established under the regulations; and secondly, by improving communication with participating clients and agents, to support them and make the processing easier.
In this regard, through the e-distribución website information can be accessed on the different modalities for self-consumption, the procedures to activate it, as well as FAQs and answers that can serve as a guide to the consumer. In the private area on the website, clients can view the status of their request for access and connection and to verify the progress made towards completing the procedure. Customers can also get information by telephone (900 920 974) and this number only deals with queries about self-consumption.
With regard to the procedure for individual self-consumption, Endesa proposed to the regulator that the modification of the contract between distributor and customer (the contract for Third Party Access to the Network) should be completed within ten days of receiving confirmation from the Autonomous Community that the customer has correctly registered the installation, without waiting to receive the request from the retailer.
With regard to collective self-consumption, the acceleration in the processing consists of the distributor only needing to validate the necessary documentation once (distribution agreement signed by all self-consumers and the file with distribution coefficients). Currently, the regulations oblige the distributor to collect this documentation from each of the retailers for each self-consumer, which involves unnecessarily lengthening the activation periods and in many cases, rejecting applications due to errors detected in the documents. Endesa will be able to apply this measure, which would involve modifying the contracts within ten days, starting already in October, once the computer systems have been adapted.
The electricity distribution networks are immersed in a process of transformation and modernisation to develop their new role as facilitators in the energy transition process and making these objectives a reality, since they are the ones that will favour both the development of self-consumption, the integration of renewable energies, the deployment of the electric car and the electrification of demand for energy in other industrial and domestic sectors. This is why Endesa has made the development of networks one of its strategic priorities, with the emphasis on digitalisation, increasing the quality of supply and the resilience of the grid and providing easier access to distributed generation installations.
About Endesa
Endesa is a leading electricity company in Spain and the second largest in Portugal. The company is also the second largest gas operator in the Spanish market. Endesa operates an end-to-end electricity generation, distribution and marketing business. Through Endesa X, it also offers value-added services aimed at the electrification of energy usage in homes, companies, industries and Public Administrations. It is also the leading operator of charging stations in Spain through Endesa X Way, a business line dedicated entirely to electric mobility. Endesa is firmly committed to the United Nations SDGs and strongly supports the development of renewable energies through Enel Green Power España, the digitalisation of grids through e-distribución and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The Endesa Foundation is also active in CSR. Our workforce numbers around 9,260 employees. Endesa is a division of Enel, the largest electricity group in Europe.