The Association of Energy-Intensive Companies (AEGE) comprises 30 companies and 98 industrial plants in sectors such as steel, chemicals, metallurgy, industrial gases, and glass, representing around 7% of Spain's mainland electricity demand . Just a few years ago, that figure was around 10%, a drop that the organization itself attributes to the decline in activity in energy-intensive industries.
In this context, storage is starting to gain ground as a tool to make better use of renewable generation and reduce exposure to peak hours.
AEGE believes it is advisable for factories to incorporate knowledge and some of their own capacity, although it anticipates that the fastest deployment will come first from generation, through hybrid renewable plants with batteries capable of transferring solar surpluses to the higher price ranges.
Pedro González, CEO of AEGE, also introduces a caution regarding the multiplicity of income currently attributed to these assets: arbitrage, secondary and tertiary regulation, voltage control, reactive power, backup in case of outages and other system services.
“They’re telling us that batteries are good for everything. I always think: it can’t be good for everything at once. They’re selling the product with all the functionalities, but they’re not designing the product for the demand,” he points out in a conversation with Energía Estratégica .
The association anticipates that the market will eventually reveal which combination of services ultimately sustains the profitability of each project. Before that, however, it must resolve some unknowns that continue to delay investment in Spain.
González points to the massive requests for connection from storage projects, the congestion generated at certain points, and the delay in the capacity market, from which many developers expected to obtain an additional source of income.
He is also cautiously monitoring the speed of deployment. Expectations pointed to closing 2026 with around 1 GW of installed battery capacity , but the executive believes that Spain will fall “far short” of that target.
The delay is particularly striking given the economic signals the market is beginning to show. González points out that time-of-use price differences can range from €0 to €300/MWh , a range capable of significantly improving arbitrage between daytime and nighttime electricity rates.
“You load it at three in the afternoon, unload it at ten at night, and your business case comes out perfectly,” he exemplifies.
But transferring that operation directly to a factory opens up another problem: a steel, chemical or metallurgical company does not structure its business around optimizing electrical positions minute by minute.
“The industry doesn’t play around with electricity, it doesn’t live off buying and selling electricity, it lives off something else. A battery requires a team of experts, of traders, to operate it practically in real time,” González warns.
Hence, AEGE envisions first a scheme in which renewable producers manage these assets and industrial demand can take advantage of the displaced energy without directly assuming all the operational complexity.
An industry that cannot simply choose when to consume
Interest in batteries appears at a particularly delicate time for large consumers.
AEGE members currently account for around 7% of the Iberian Peninsula's electricity demand , compared to nearly 10% in previous years—a reduction the organization attributes to the decline in activity experienced since the beginning of the energy crisis. The association comprises 30 companies and 98 plants in sectors such as steel, metallurgy, chemicals, industrial gases, glass, and mining.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the subsequent geopolitical tensions, and the volatility of raw materials hit Europe particularly hard. According to González, this international context explains only part of the loss of competitiveness: the other part lies within Spain's own economic policies.
Their forecasts place market prices for this last quarter above €140/MWh , before including ancillary services. For next year, they anticipate prices above €90/MWh , again without including these costs.
The latest AEGE Energy Barometer, updated on September 6, 2026 , tracks not only the evolution of Spanish spot and futures prices compared to the main European markets, but also the adjustment services and capacity payments that ultimately make up the effective cost borne by the industrial consumer.
Here a fundamental difference appears compared to the behavior of other demands: an electro-intensive factory usually needs to operate in a sustained manner and has little margin to move large blocks of production towards the cheaper ranges.
Therefore, frequent zero solar hours or negative prices do not solve their energy equation on their own.
“What matters most to us is the average price. We have little flexibility and find it difficult to avoid peak hours with the highest prices,” explains González.
That is precisely one of the points where storage could gain relevance: not by forcing a plant to completely transform its processes to pursue market minimums, but by shifting some of that energy to areas compatible with its activity.
The renewable energy price is not the industrial bill
The paradox goes beyond storage. Spain can offer lower wholesale prices than its neighbors during certain periods and still lose that advantage when comparing the final cost borne by an industry.
The energy purchased on the market is supplemented by ancillary services, network tolls, charges linked to energy policies, and taxes. From there, compensation mechanisms come into play, the application of which differs among Member States.
One of the main ones is compensation for indirect CO₂ costs. European regulations allow for the reimbursement of some of the impact that the price of emission allowances introduces into the electricity consumed by sectors exposed to international competition.
According to AEGE, Spain has not used this tool with the same intensity as other countries.
González estimates that during the last three years the Spanish energy-intensive industry failed to receive approximately 1.1 billion euros compared to the maximum it could have accessed through this mechanism.
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While Germany has been applying the maximum authorized level for years, Spain has fluctuated between different levels of support. Italy, which was previously below that level, is also expected to apply the maximum allowed this year.
“Not only do we not receive the maximum amount, but we also generally don’t know how much we are going to receive. This makes it very difficult to plan productive activity,” he argues.
The impact is significant. In a market of approximately €100/MWh, González estimates that around €30/MWh could account for the effect of CO₂ allowances.
Taxation adds another difference compared to European competitors, where there are broader exemptions for activities exposed to global markets.
But it is in the adjusting services where AEGE identifies one of the most pronounced deteriorations in recent years.
According to data provided by its CEO, these additional costs have increased sixfold in five years and will exceed €20/MWh in 2026. The reinforcement of system operations after the 2025 switch-off, technical restrictions, congestion, and renewable energy curtailment are all part of a bill that is ultimately passed on to the consumer.
The problem for a factory lies not only in its scale, but also in the fact that part of it is only known after the fact . A company might schedule consumption during a seemingly cheap hour and only later discover the true cost of the adjustments.
AEGE proposes anticipating these signals and transferring some of these concepts towards more stable tariff structures.
Portugal is already working in that direction. According to González, its regulator is considering initially incorporating around 40% of certain adjustment costs into tolls , reducing the volatility passed directly on to industrial consumption.
Electrify a factory and face a four or five-year wait.
The challenge begins even before deciding how to buy electricity.
Many of the industries represented by AEGE continue to use large quantities of gas for thermal processes and have room to replace some of that consumption through electrification. Glass is one example: companies that until now did not fully fit the energy-intensive profile plan to replace gas furnaces with electric equipment as part of their decarbonization strategies.
Network access can block that transition.
“I may want to decarbonize through electrification and they may be telling me: we have to wait for the planning, we have to wait for a new network, wait four or five years,” González points out.
The result is that some companies are pursuing several technological paths. Electricity, biomethane, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen are all vying to become the solution of choice to replace fossil fuels.
The choice is not trivial. An industrial plant can operate for decades, so opting for an energy source that later proves structurally more expensive than the one chosen by its competitors can affect its international standing for years.
That same outlook explains why the availability of renewables has not yet turned Spain into the great industrial hub that it projected for years around its solar and wind resources.
González acknowledges interest and numerous projects on paper, but believes that the effective arrival of new industry continues to occur "in dribs and drabs", with a particularly high weight of investments linked to the automotive industry and battery factories.
The next step could emerge around those plants if they manage to attract production of anodes, cathodes and other components and consolidate local supply chains.
But energy competes with more variables: logistics, suppliers, customers, land, rail connection or port access.
The call from an investor who never returned
González recounts an experience that summarizes the problem from the perspective of someone evaluating the installation of new industrial capacity.
A Central European company was considering building a twin plant to an existing one, with an estimated consumption of around 500 GWh per year and between 80 and 90 MW of power . Spain was initially listed as its main location.
The investor already had forecasts about the wholesale market. What he wanted to know was everything else.
When inquiring about adjustment services, he found costs whose evolution could not be easily predicted or covered. Regarding tolls, he discovered an 80% discount, but without a corresponding guarantee for the entire life of the investment. Charges could vary depending on public contributions each year.
“After a two-hour chat explaining more or less all of this, they hung up the phone and I haven’t heard from them since,” he recalls.
The anecdote summarizes the distance between having abundant renewable resources and transforming them into a signal stable enough to attract investments that will remain for 25 or 30 years.
Energy storage can help close part of that gap, especially if it can shift the surplus energy currently driving down solar prices to nighttime hours. But batteries appear as just one piece in a much larger equation.
Spain simultaneously needs grid capacity to electrify new loads, predictable signals on system costs, conditions comparable with other European competitors, and a BESS model capable of demonstrating its profitability without forcing each factory to also become an electricity market operator.
For large industries, the renewable energy opportunity is no longer measured solely by the number of megawatts of solar or wind power fed into the grid. The next challenge will be ensuring that this energy reaches factories when they need it, with a bill that can be projected for decades.