​Ko can now reliably provide you with answers to specific questions you may have regarding Spanish power prices, asset revenues and operations.

​Although there is abundant public information on the different Spanish power markets, processing and analysing this data is usually a very complex task. This can now be done very easily through Ko.

This article walks through several examples of how users can put Ko’s Spanish data to work with specific prompts. The examples cover information that market analysts, battery developers, or financial analysts would want to know regarding the Spanish power markets. In each case, we show the prompt we gave Ko, and the output provided.

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Key takeaways

• ​Ko can now answer questions regarding Spain’s generation mix, from installed capacity by technology and region down to individual battery bidding units and their owners.
• Revenue questions can go to the bidding asset level. Ko traces day-ahead, intraday, technical restrictions (TTRR), and mFRR revenues for any stand-alone or co-located battery.
• Ko can answer revenue questions regarding the full revenue stack according to our Virtual Battery Benchmarks (ME vBESS ES (1/2/4H)).
• Price and balancing data can be accessed at 15-minute resolution. Ko covers day-ahead, intraday auction, aFRR capacity and energy, mFRR and the intraday continuous market prices, all queryable by hour, day, or month.
• Ko already knows Spain’s structural quirks, which helps it navigate complex data sources such as the bidding information provided by Red Eléctrica.

​What does the Spanish electricity mix look like and how has it evolved over time?

​The first question when entering a new region is the simplest, but one of the most meaningful: what does the generation mix actually look like today, and how is it changing?

​Ko pulls the monthly installed capacity data from ESIOS’s (Red Eléctrica’s information system), which reports one row per technology per region (Comunidad Autónoma, autonomous community). In Spain’s case, solar PV is split into grid-connected capacity, at around 45.8 GW, and behind-the-meter self-consumption, at around 9.5 GW.

​You can get more granular data by asking Ko about the installed capacity at a regional (autonomous communities) level.

​Installed capacity is one of the Spanish datasets that Ko can break down by region. Swap “wind” for any other technology in the same prompt, and Ko returns the regional distribution for that technology instead. This can be useful for an analyst scoping where a given resource is highly concentrated and predicting where the next wave of development might land.

Who operates BESS in Spain, and how much capacity sits where?

​A developer looking to invest in the Spanish market needs a different starting point: not the generation mix as a whole, but the competitive landscape for batteries specifically.

​To answer this question, Ko analyses bidding assets currently operating in Spain and their associated physical assets. In Spain, a bidding asset can contain one or several physical assets. Batteries are a particular case, as they have two separate bidding entities, one to buy and another to sell electricity. Ko already considers this when analysing asset data.

If you want to go into further detail on the main players in the Spanish BESS landscape, you can query Ko about specific owners. To guarantee Ko provides the right answer reference “programming units” which is the term used by Red Eléctrica to refer to bidding assets in Spain.

Again, Ko provides an extensive list of the different bidding and physical assets, breaking down their respective codes, technologies and capacities. The summary of that list is presented below.

​Swap in any developer or utility name, and Ko returns the same asset-level breakdown, a quick way to size a specific competitor’s footprint before a market-entry decision or a partnership conversation.

If you want to go into specific parts of the potential revenue stack, you can also ask Ko on revenues for a particular market.

​The daily and real-time technical-restrictions markets are a revenue stream specific to Spain. Ranking it alongside ownership gives a developer a fast read on which operators are already capturing it, and at which sites.

​What do power market prices look like and what revenues can be captured by batteries in Spain?

​A financial analyst underwriting a Spanish BESS asset needs the price signal first, then the revenue that follows. You can ask Ko directly for the price evolution of a specific market.

​However, the spread is really where a battery’s arbitrage opportunity lives. You can also compare prices across different markets as a follow-up.

​Ko’s answer typically shows day-ahead clearing slightly above intraday during peak hours, then below intraday through the midday solar trough, with spreads usually in the single-digit euros per MWh.

Instead of inferring potential battery revenues from historical prices, you can ask Ko for the actual revenue stack for a specific timeframe. To avoid possible confusion between the Virtual Battery Benchmarks Modo publishes, preface the question by using “Using actual ESIOS settlement data”, which clarifies that you want Ko to reference real assets.

​This is the closest any analysis can get to a real revenue stack for Spain today based on actual market operations by different agents. It comes with an important caveat baked into the answer: Spain’s captured-market revenue data excludes aFRR and the intraday continuous market. aFRR revenues are absent because Red Eléctrica does not report them by asset, and the intraday continuous market reports results with a different naming convention. Ko states this limitation rather than presenting a partial figure as if they were complete.

To estimate potential revenues on the intraday continuous market, you can ask Ko for specific trades.

In this case, Ko also clarifies that the data presented refers to total participation (including both buy-side and sell-side operations). If you want the full estimation of the revenue-stack potential of a battery operating in Spain, you can ask Ko about our Virtual Battery Benchmarks.

​The full range: what else you can ask Ko about Spain

​These examples above are a starting point, not the ceiling. Ko’s Spain coverage extends further:

• ​Evolution of Spain’s installed capacity over the years
• A stand-alone battery fleet’s hour-by-hour charge and discharge profile on a specific day
• The full day-ahead, intraday auction, intraday continuous market, aFRR and mFRR price curves for any single day, not just the average
• The day-ahead programme (PBF) for any generation technology, or for total demand, both by hour (and quarter-hour) of the day

​Access Ko for free in the Terminal here.