Operación Reforzada at unit level: which CCGTs win and lose the redispatch

Companion to the analysis by group and the 12-months-after-blackout study. Here we go down to the plant level. Ownership attribution uses the owner_group field of esios.unit_owner_dict, which distinguishes asset owner from market agent in OMIE.

In the Besós complex, next to the Llobregat delta in Sant Adrià de Besós (Barcelona), two combined-cycle gas turbines share the same physical site: unit 4 and unit 5. Different owners — Naturgy operates unit 4, Endesa operates unit 5. Same exact geography, same local grid, same nearby urban demand. What changes post-blackout is only the owner.

Pre-blackout, both units move in the 5-18 €M/month band, with Besós 5 (Endesa) frequently above. After the April 2025 blackout, both jump to 20 €M (the month of the event), and from there they diverge: Besós 4 (Naturgy) stays in 12-17 €M; Besós 5 (Endesa) collapses to 0-2 €M in October-December 2025. Same plant, same grid, same geography, two owners, two opposite trajectories.

It’s the most visible symptom of a pattern repeated across the system: Operación Reforzada’s redispatch isn’t blind — it selects unit by unit. And the selection is far from owner-neutral.

The ranking, unit by unit

The waterfall captures the full reshuffle at a glance. (Aboño 2’s retag — code ABO2 coal → ABO2G gas mid-period — is excluded because it appears as an artificial winner.) Three immediate observations:

1. The explosive winners aren’t the majors. Amorebieta (Axpo), Castejón 3 (TotalEnergies), Escatrón 3 (Repsol), and both Arrubal units (ContourGlobal) have the biggest deltas in the table. They’re mid-or-small units going from occasional to intensive use. Iberdrola is the only “major utility” appearing systematically near the top (Escombreras 6, Arcos 1+2, Tarragona Power) — Naturgy concentrates the mid-range deltas and Endesa concentrates the losers.

2. Endesa has zero units in the top section. At the bottom, Besós 5 and As Pontes 5 (the system’s two most expensive peakers, with average prices of 1,400 and 1,945 €/MWh respectively) see Operación Reforzada call them much less often. The reason is structural: REE prefers capacity already programmed in day-ahead over expensive peakers activated at the last minute — and BES5/PGR5 were exactly those emergency peakers.

3. Within the same owner, the trajectory isn’t uniform. Naturgy wins at C. Gibraltar 10+20, Palos 1+2+3, Cartagena 2, Besós 4, Puerto Barcelona 2; but loses at Málaga 1, Cartagena 3, Sabón 3, Sagunto 2. The unit matters more than the owner.

The Besós case isn’t unique: there’s reshuffle inside the same plant

If we look at plants with multiple units of the same or different owner:

• Besós (Barcelona): BES4 (Naturgy) +€28M, BES5 (Endesa) -€71M. Net difference: €99M inside the same site.
• Cartagena (Murcia): CTGN2 (Naturgy) +€28M, CTGN3 (Naturgy) -€37M. Same owner, two turbines, opposite trajectories.
• Engie Cartagena: ESCCC1 +€42M, ESCCC2 -€22M. Same cluster from the same owner, two units in opposite trajectories.
• Palos de la Frontera (Huelva): PALOS1, 2, 3 — all Naturgy — +€27, +46, +32M. Homogeneous block of winners.
• Arcos de la Frontera (Cádiz): ARCOS1, ARCOS2 — Iberdrola — +€34, +49M. Homogeneous block of winners.
• Galicia (A Coruña): SBO3 (Sabón, Naturgy) -€30M, PGR5 (As Pontes, Endesa) -€22M. Two units, two different owners, both lose — geography rules.
• Vizcaya: AMBIETA (Amorebieta, Axpo) +€81M, BAHIAB (Bahía de Bizkaia, Gunvor+EVE) -€63M. Two plants, two owners, opposite trajectories in the same region — owner rules.

Pattern: the dominant factor varies by region. In Cádiz/Huelva and the north interior, geography is the only thing that matters (all win). In Galicia, geography also rules but toward losing. In Vizcaya and Catalonia, owner explains more than location.

The geography: two clear winner clusters

The map reveals two clusters of net winners and one clear cluster of losers:

• Southwest Andalucía (Cádiz / Huelva): 9 units, all winners. Palos 1+2+3 (Huelva, Naturgy), Arcos 1+2 (Cádiz, Iberdrola), C. Gibraltar 10+20 (Cádiz, Naturgy), Algeciras 3 (Cádiz, Repsol). It’s the most uniform cluster, structurally favored by Operación Reforzada.
• North interior (Aragón / Navarra / La Rioja): 4 units, all winners. Escatrón 3 (Repsol, Zaragoza), Castejón 3 (TotalEnergies, Navarra), Arrubal 1+2 (ContourGlobal, La Rioja). Equally homogeneous, but with diverse owners — it’s not a one-group phenomenon.
• Galicia (A Coruña): 2 units, both lose. Sabón 3 (Naturgy) -€30M and As Pontes 5 (Endesa) -€22M. Two different owners, same geographic pattern of loss.

Other regions:

• Vizcaya: Amorebieta (Axpo) +€81M vs Bahía de Bizkaia (Gunvor+EVE) -€63M. Two different owners, two opposite trajectories in the same province.
• Catalonia: mixed plant-by-plant (Besós 4 wins, Besós 5 loses, Tarragona Power wins, Plana del Vent 2 loses, Puerto Barcelona 2 wins).
• Levante (Sagunto, Valencia): lose.
• Centre (Aceca, Toledo): Aceca 3 loses €31M.
• Southern Mediterranean (Málaga): Málaga 1 loses €49M — despite being in the same autonomous community as Cádiz and Huelva, Málaga city falls outside the southwest winners cluster.
• Southeast (Cartagena/Escombreras): mixed, specific winners (Escombreras 6, ESCCC1, Cartagena 2) and specific losers (Cartagena 3, ESCCC2).

The pattern points to a grid logic, not an ownership one: REE needs synchronous capacity at specific nodes to guarantee stability under renewable variability. Southwest Andalucía has high PV penetration (Sevilla, Huelva, Cádiz are top provinces in installed PV), and local CCGTs are structurally called on to resolve the technical constraint from daytime renewable excess. North interior has heavy wind (Aragón, Navarra), with the same dynamic. Galicia, in contrast, lost the redispatch battle — its two CCGTs inherited from the historic coal model (Sabón ex-Endesa, As Pontes ex-Endesa) sit in zones where the post-Reforzada system doesn’t need synchronous generation.

Implications for plant operators

Three operational readings:

1. For groups with synchronous fleet in the south or north interior, Operación Reforzada is near-guaranteed revenue. Iberdrola (Arcos, Escombreras 6, Tarragona, Castejón 2), Naturgy (Palos, C. Gibraltar), Repsol (Algeciras, Escatrón 3), TotalEnergies (Castejón 3), ContourGlobal (Arrubal) — all in favored zones.

2. For expensive emergency peakers, the business model has changed. Besós 5 (Endesa) and As Pontes 5 (Endesa) operate with average prices of 1,400 and 1,945 €/MWh, but Operación Reforzada calls them much less because REE prefers capacity already scheduled in day-ahead. Volume drops drastically.

3. Within the same plant, REE selects by technical unit, not by owner. If a unit has long maintenance, better ramp-rate, better operational availability, it wins. Operationally this means that maintaining the reliability of the specific unit becomes premium again.

What the reshuffle tells us about Operación Reforzada

Twelve months of data confirm two things:

1. The new post-blackout regime doesn’t reward all CCGTs equally. The pre-blackout distribution was relatively flat within the fleet; post-blackout concentrates the flow in ~20 specific units with clear geographic clusters. It’s selection, not universal subsidy.

2. The reshuffle reveals which CCGTs are technically most valuable for Spanish post-Reforzada stability. Not by size, not by owner, not by age: by location in the renewable-penetration map and by technical availability. Expensive peakers are displaced; machines with good ramp and good location capture the flow.

There’s a broader conclusion behind this: the public debate about “the majors cashing in on the transition” mixes things up. Naturgy keeps the stock but barely grows. Iberdrola gains, but the delta is modest compared with a Repsol (×1.72) or a ContourGlobal (×28). Renewable investment is separate from the constraints reshuffle. The data says the distribution is closer to “REE chooses where it needs synchronous capacity” than to “the major incumbents win as a block”.

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