- The Control Centre is the nerve centre that controls the correct functioning of the transformation, transport and distribution of electricity
- José Manuel Revuelta, Endesa's General Manager for Infrastructures and Networks, highlights the effort made to prepare the grid in the Canary Islands for the drive towards electrification and to be able to support the introduction of electric vehicles and self-consumption
Today, Monday 6 June, Endesa officially opened a new Control Centre for the electricity grid in the Canary Islands, located in the installations at the company's headquarters in Calle Albareda in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The event was attended by the Deputy Minister for the Fight against Climate Change and Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, Miguel Ángel Pérez, and the mayor of the city, Augusto Hidalgo. The company was represented by Endesa's general manager for Infrastructures and Networks, José Manuel Revuelta, the general manager of Endesa in the Canary Islands, Pablo Casado, and the managers of the Distribution and Generation areas in the Canary Islands, Carlos Lafoz and Saúl Barrio, respectively.
The new Control Centre for the Canary Islands' electricity grid features as Endesa's most modern nationwide and is equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The company allocated an investment of €2.3 million for this installation from where it controls, supervises and manages any incident that may occur in the 26,000 kilometres of medium and low voltage power lines distributed throughout the Canary Islands. Another of its actions is geared towards all operational activity in order to balance the production and demand of electricity in the nine thermal power plants, in the Gorona del Viento hydro-wind power plant, in El Hierro, and in other renewable plants.
The new unit became operational at the beginning of the year, but sanitary restrictions due to the pandemic and the strict controls applied by the company to safeguard the health of the people assigned to such a specialised service delayed its inauguration. In addition to the control centre inaugurated, there is a second emergency control centre to support the former. It has exactly the same equipment and is prepared to be operational at any time.
Endesa chose to double up on the Control Centre during the pandemic in order to avoid direct contact between operators on different shifts. This reduced the risk of contagion and enabled the workplace to be disinfected correctly. These auxiliary control centres work as efficiently as the main control centre. In both centres, the Distribution and Generation groups are in permanent contact with the Transporter and the Electricity Grid Operator.
This is the first time that Endesa has had a regional Control Centre where the Distribution and Generation areas are together in the same space, only separated by a glass screen that enables them to be opened whenever necessary and, therefore for both teams to be able to coordinate on certain occasions. This system makes it unnecessary to use the telephone between the operators in the two areas, facilitating decision-making, immediacy, operability and teamwork.
The Control Centre is the nerve centre that controls the correct functioning of the transformation, transport and distribution of electricity. It is operative 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. There is a team of 28 operators (16 in Distribution and 12 in Generation), and an important part of them work in closed rotating shifts to guarantee uninterrupted service.
HIGHLY QUALIFIED TECHNICIANS
Endesa's General Manager for Infrastructures and Networks, José Manuel Revuelta, who spoke in detail about the operation and the latest technology introduced in the Canary Islands Control Centre, the most recent at national level, pointed out that "the islands' electricity grid has a reliability of 99.9 percent. The implementation of this innovative Control Centre and progress in other aspects such as digitalisation are a sign that we are making preparations for a smooth transition to electrification. This network needs to be able to support the introduction and increase in electric vehicles and self-consumption. Electrification obliges us to be more efficient and with this Control Centre we introduced the latest developments in communication. Our network in the Islands and the effort made by our staff mean we are prepared for unexpected events, as happened recently with the volcano of La Palma. In spite of the magnitude of the disaster, no one was without electricity in La Palma."
The Distribution operators are responsible for ongoing control of the state of the network assigned to them, with the main objective of supplying electricity to the points of consumption with the best possible quality and safety conditions. In the case of the Canary Islands, they control and supervise 26,000 kilometres of medium and low voltage electricity network.
Most of the technicians assigned to this service have a degree in Engineering, usually specialising in Electricity. The personnel are highly qualified and do their utmost to make sure each the operations are undertaken correctly. They undertake very precise, millimetric actions in order to guarantee the quality of the supply and to recover the network in the event of incidents.
Before the control room technicians can operate on the network autonomously, they have to complete a rigorous six-month theoretical and practical training cycle. "You should bear in mind that in the Distribution Room the level of operational error rates stands at about two or three errors per 100,000 manoeuvres undertaken and normally these are errors without consequences," explained the manager of the Distribution area in the Canary Islands, Juan Carlos Lafoz.
Also, because they are an essential feature of the electrical system, these centres have a series of protection measures designed to guarantee operation by means of automatic switching, with more than one electrical source to switch them if necessary; Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems, using batteries and other energy storage elements and generators that come into operation if the power cut persists.
Juan Carlos Lafoz, manager of the Distribution area in the Canary Islands, explained that "Endesa is making great progress in automating and digitalising our networks. Remote control makes the response time much faster in the event of a one-off incident, since it speeds up the location of the fault and also enables the remote management of the network".
This year in the Canary Islands, 20 percent automation has already been achieved, which means that one in five transformation centres is already remotely controlled. To this factor we can add the introduction of sensoring elements in 40 percent of the centres, and which provide valuable information about what is happening in low voltage networks.
SUPERVISION OF THERMAL POWER PLANTS
The Generation Control Centre maintains a dialogue with the nine thermal power plants in the Canary Islands in order to collect and transmit information that is exchanged with the System Operator (REE). The main parameters for the six electrical systems in the Canary Islands, Lanzarote-Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro can be visualised. They also confirm coupling and decoupling orders for the generators, collect any novelties with regard to the availability of the generators and monitor the correct functioning of automatic frequency control. They also coordinate discharges that affect positions in the Transport Network which affect the plants.
The manager of the Endesa Generation area in the Canary Islands, Saúl Barrio, pointed out that "the Control Centre pays special attention to monitoring that the frequency is as stable as possible, which is the best indicator of the correct balance between generation and demand for energy. The penetration of renewables means that thermal power station generators need to make a significant effort to regulate variations in renewable energy and for the end user to maintain the quality of supply."
The new control system enables the main parameters for the electrical systems to be observed and for actions to be requested from the power stations when there is any deviation. There is constant communication with the thermal power plants.
Incidents located from the Control Centre located at Endesa's headquarters in the capital can range from the unavailability of a generator that was expected in the programme before it was connected, to the untimely shutdown of a generator in operation that may or may not affect supply. In all these cases, the technicians in the Control Centre assess the existing options to replace this unavailable power and the new programme indicated by the system operator is communicated to the plants.
The new control system installed is much more versatile than the previous one and the parameters to be monitored to be customised, as well as making detailed studies of deviations and incidents that enable us to continue improving the operation of the assets. "In one day there can be more than 60 couplings or decouplings of generators in the different electrical systems. The control centre supervises to make sure that the programmes indicated by the system operator are complied with," said Saúl Barrio.
FIVE CONTROL CENTRES IN SPAIN
The five control centres for the electricity grid (CORE) that Endesa has in the territories where it operates constitute an essential point within the electricity system, since they enable monitoring of a network of the more than 316,500 kilometres of lines managed by the company, the equivalent of eight times round the earth, to which we should add 1,326 substations and 130,575 transformation centres.
These control centres are also directly connected to Endesa's call centre, where alerts are received from customers who have detected an incident in their supply, in order to be able to offer unified management of all the company's resources. In this regard, these Control Centres also provide an exclusive information service for the municipalities, with the aim of coordinating with the municipal technical services the management of possible incidents and in coordination with all local and regional emergency services, Civil Protection and State security forces.
During the past year e-distribución undertook more than 3 million manoeuvres from the control centres, of which more than 1.62 million were automatic.