The National Commission for Markets and Competition has given the green light to a Telefónica proposal related to its co-location service at its power stations, which modifies the calculation system that the co-located operators must pay Telefónica for electricity. In this way, these operators until now paid even less than what it cost Telefónica. Behind the resolution of the CNMCthe costs of these operators will increase and we will see if it has an impact on the customer bill.
It should be remembered that Telefónica has the collocation obligation. In other words, it must make room in its exchanges for the equipment of the rest of the operators and is accompanied by the technical resources, safety conditions and necessary conditioning, for the installation of the equipment used by the authorized operators. For this reason, the service includes, in addition to air conditioning and lighting, the provision of electricity to power the co-located equipment. It is mainly an uninterruptible current electrical supply
continuous and -48 volts, which is adequate for network equipment.
Telefónica will charge more for the price of electricity
Until now, Telefónica charges the rest of the operators for their electricity consumption based on an estimate based on the declared power. “To date, energy billing for co-located equipment follows a fixed or “flat” price scheme, that is, independent of the consumption actually made by the operator. Indeed, the consumption of each operator is not measured since to simplify the installation, metering equipment has not been established for the individualized measurement of consumption”.
This situation has become obsolete since the excessive price dance that is happening since 2021 in the price of electricity. “Telefónica has indicated that the current temporary scheme, which supposes that the prices that the electricity companies apply to Telefónica at a certain moment are transferred to the co-located operators a year later, was acceptable in an environment of stable prices and as long as the power maximum declared by the operators does not suffer great variations”.
The resolution of the CNMC
However, a new Resolution of the National Commission for Markets and Competition sides with Telefónica, validating the proposal made by the company, which is summarized in the introduction of a new billing system consisting of two phases:
A monthly billing using an estimated price of the updated kWh price in that month. A subsequent regularization on a semi-annual basis of the amounts paid by the operators to Telefónica, applying the estimated monthly price, so that they adjust to the prices paid by Telefónica with its electricity suppliers during the six-month period to be regularized.
The proposed system is used for the mode of consumption with a flat rate and for the mode of consumption measured with a meter. Telefónica believes that with this system at the end of the process the operator pays for what he declares, at the real price corresponding to the period of consumption, since each semester a regularization is made so that it happens.
«For the monthly invoicing of the first and second semester of 2023, the estimated monthly prices will be used with the new methodology, adding a surcharge to the days that are part of the transitional period. In the same way, the real price data used for the regularizations of the first and second semester of 2023, which will be carried out in January and July 2024, will add a surcharge to the days that are part of the transitional period.
