Yesterday, 14 December, daily demand for natural gas in Spain reached a record 1,455 GWh. This beat the previous record obtained in December 2013.
This figure also represents the third consecutive maximum in daily demand for natural gas over the past three years, after reaching 1,419 GWh on Tuesday and 1,413 GWh on Monday.
This growth is mainly due to a high consumption of combined-cycle gas. Specifically, yesterday was the second highest day of consumption in 2016, with a total of 432 GWh. Another two factors contributing to this record were low levels of wind power generation and the recent stoppage of two nuclear power stations in Spain.
Furthermore, conventional daily demand yesterday reached 1,013 GWh, mainly driven by growth in the industrial sector as temperatures have not been lower than normal for this time of year.
So far this year, national demand has grown by 1%, and 2016 is expected to close with an increase of around 2% compared to 2015.
