Spain’s Endesa purchased 333 GWh of solar energy in the auction market for the last quarter of the year

Madrid, Spain — Endesa, a company belonging to the Enel Group, leader in the Spanish electricity sector and second operator in the Portuguese electricity market, purchased 333 GWh of solar energy in the auction market for the last quarter of the year, equivalent to an installed capacity of 1,200 MW of photovoltaic producers.

The auction, in which orders for a total of 12 participants were crossed, was held today between 11:30 am and 12:51 pm and was fully covered in the third round at a final price of 51.94 €/MWh.

In July Endesa announced that it was going to encourage quarterly auctions to be held, which have been organised and supervised by OMIP, the independent Iberian Energy Derivatives Exchange, in which Endesa would represent the sole end purchaser of the power up to a maximum of 500 GWh (depending on the solar production of each period according to the time of the year).

Accordingly, forward-type financial contracts have been established based on the index published by OMIP, the SPEL Solar index, which received the approval of the Portuguese financial regulator CMVM, the Portuguese Securities Market Commission on 17 September of this year.

Javier Alonso Pérez, Head of Trading at Endesa, is of the opinion that “the success of this auction confirms the interest of solar producers in the development of financial products that are capable of reducing the volatility of their income”.

Until now, the wholesale forward market had not offered the financial risk management tools in a transparent, reliable and competitive environment, required to meet the specific profile of solar production. This is therefore the financial market’s first solar energy auction which also enables the creation of a specific index for solar products (SPEL Solar), the first in Europe which will also serve as a reference to analyse the progress and behaviour of this technology in the financial markets.

The contracts designed by OMIP and OMIClear are included in the MIBEL Derivative Market Portfolio of products, with OMIClear assuming the role of central counterparty responsible for the entire risk management and payments.

This is a new mechanism on the financial market at an international level, as it is a product designed specifically for producing renewable energies, in this case photovoltaic energy, applicable also to solar thermal energy.