Electricity demand in Spain fell by 9.5% in the second week with the application of measures from the Government's savings plan, according to data from Red Eléctrica. The figure, which includes from August 15 to 21 and is a comparison with the demand of the previous week, more than doubles the 3.7% reduction of the first days. Among the decisions contained in the plan, public buildings without exterior lighting at night, a limit on air conditioning temperatures in offices or shop windows turned off after 10:00 p.m. are included.
In total, 4,575 GWh were consumed. If compared to the same seven days in 2021, the reduction reaches 8.6%. The data represents an advance over the first days of application, when the 5,056 GWh of demand implied that it was barely 2% less than the previous year.
"The national electricity demand has been reduced significantly since the application of the energy saving and efficiency measures. The reduction has doubled from one week to the next, something that may be due to greater social awareness and better application of the measures," according to sources from the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
"Thanks to these measures, the Government calculates that the country can save half of the commitment assumed with the EU to reduce energy demand to face a possible total cut in the supply of Russian gas", they complete from the Ministry led by Teresa Ribera. Spain has promised to reduce gas consumption by 7% after negotiating the figure within the framework of a plan at European level, which reaches 15%, which aims to reduce dependence on Russian gas.
Precisely the turbulence in the gas market will cause this Tuesday the Spanish wholesale electricity market to mark its highest average price since the gas cap came into force. Specifically, the reference for regulated rate customers linked to the wholesale market will soar 34.77% this Tuesday compared to this Monday, up to 365.33 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), according to provisional data from the Operator of the Iberian Energy Market (OMIE).
