The integration of renewable energy and the system operation: The Special Regime Control Centre (CECRE) in Spain

There is a national targeted amount of 20.000 MW of installed wind power in the Spanish Electrical System by 2010, the new Infrastructures Program -2016 horizon-, to be issued in the next months, appoints to a new 29.000 MW target for that period, and there are even more ambitious objectives for the next decade. This amount of installed power, compared with a load peak around 43700 MW and taking into account the low interconnection capacity of the Spanish Peninsular Power System to the UCTE interconnected network, constitutes a big challenge for the system operation. The current Spanish legal framework, described in this article, is motivated by: the need to address an interesting economic regime to attract investments, in order to achieve the targeted objectives and the technical exigencies to this wind farms, required to correctly integrate wind energy without jeopardising the actual levels of quality.