- With the aim of promoting the electrification of demand and responding to current needs, work will be undertaken in ten districts of Barcelona.
- The company is continuing with its investment efforts, also aimed at increasing the digitalisation of the grid and progress in the preparation of infrastructures to meet the city's new challenges and future energy uses.
- The commitment to investment is the result of a roundtable in coordination with the City Council, which involves regular monitoring of actions and planning operations focussing on making the high-, medium- and low-voltage network more robust and resilient.
- As a distributor for an essential service, Endesa focusses its investment on a double objective: To continue guaranteeing supply with the construction and renovation of infrastructures and to ensure quality by using new technologies and adopting global maintenance plans.
Endesa has taken a further step towards remodelling and preparing the electricity grid in the city of Barcelona with the aim of reinforcing supply in the city's ten districts and preparing the infrastructures with a view to promoting the electrification of demand, a key factor to accelerate the decarbonisation process and fight against climate change. This Plan, agreed with the City Council, is for a three-year period (2021-2023) and consists of an investment, made entirely by the company, that is 40% higher than the investment allocated during previous periods. This year, almost Euros 46 million will be ser aside.
The City Plan was agreed between Endesa and the Barcelona City Council and aims to improve the quality of the service by constructing, renovating and maintaining the high-, medium- and low-voltage electric infrastructure as a support for the city with regard to its transformation and growth, while meeting the new challenges and enabling the new uses for energy. The Plan, which has made it possible to set up projects across all districts, includes structural actions and others aimed at the automation and digitalisation of the grid, although this year, the investment has been reoriented towards the improvement of the transformation centres and their multiple possibilities. The aim is to strengthen the city's electricity network to make it more reliable and robust, paying special attention to the part that is closer to the consumer, low-voltage. The investment effort over these three years reflects the sustained economic growth of the city.
The new Investment Plan has a double objective: to continue developing, improving and guaranteeing service with the construction and renovation of electrical infrastructures on the low-, medium- and high-voltage electricity grid, as well as ensuring quality with the ongoing deployment of maintenance plans distributed throughout each of the city's ten districts, including structural actions on the medium-voltage grid such as the renovation and extension of transformation centres and the extension of underground cabling) the automation and digitalisation of the grid, which will enable a 20% reduction in the time clients are affected by an issue, whatever may be the cause, and the extension and networking of the low-voltage grid. Predictive, preventive and corrective actions will also be taken. Furthermore, a commitment to the development of smart grids is one of the companies priorities so as to be able to manage new energy uses such as distributed generation, self-consumption and electric mobility.
The main lines of action for the City Plan are as follows:
- The construction, renovation and digitalisation of the high-, medium- and low-voltage electricity grid to make it more resilient. The most notable actions in the pipeline include the renovation of part of the underground high-voltage wiring, as well as the renovation and expansion of 610 transformation centres in the medium-voltage grid with the installation of cabins to increase safety and remote control. There will also be 10 kilometres of new medium-voltage lines. At the same time, the remote control of 321 transformer centres is planned and by the end of 2023, 74% of transformer centres are due to be sensorised. In low-voltage, 61 actions are planned across the ten districts.
- The introduction or increase of new technologies that will make it possible to reduce the time customers are affected when an incident occurs and better manage the grid.
- Special mention should go to the automation of the medium-voltage grid by installing new remote control systems, remote-action devices that enable the network to be controlled and managed remotely from the company's Control Centre. This will enable response time to be much faster when an incident occurs, because it makes it quicker to locate the breakdown and it enables the network to be remotely managed without the need for personnel to travel to the location and with the aim of supplying clients from alternative sources, wherever this is possible. At the end of 2023, 40% of the installations are expected to be automated.
- The implementation of the LARS system (Location of Breakdowns and Restoration of Supply) is also an essential feature of the digitalisation process, because this is an automatic system that is actioned when an incident occurs just as if it were a virtual operator, so the Control Centre system itself automatically takes the action required in order to isolate the incidents and restore supply as soon as possible. Thus, the LARS system is responsible for managing remote controls and work is being performed to integrate historical data, maps of street works and weather forecasts, amongst other aspects, to allow the system to more accurately and quickly determine where on a line an incident has occurred and thus react more quickly.
- The sensorisation of medium voltage transformation centres, making it possible to obtain and manage data on the elements in relation to the electricity grid to gain greater control over electricity fraud and overloads, and increase the efficiency and automation of infrastructures. So at the end of this year, 74% of the city's installations will have been sensorised.
- ALTAMIRA PROJECT. The future of the sensorisation and digitalisation in low-voltage facilities lies in the pilot test being carried out in Catalonia and that, in the case of Barcelona, will be performed at fifteen stations in Ciutat Vella. The project aims to generate all the information that the low-voltage electricity grid can provide us with, such as power, voltage, identifying customers who depend on it, detecting possible energy losses, controlling loads and saturation that may be affecting the line and, even if there is electrical fraud to manage preventive and non-corrective actions.
- DIGITAL TWIN. One of the innovative projects under way is the creation of a digital twin, known as the Network Digital Twin: an exact – digital – replica of the existing network, which can be used to generate simulations in all possible conditions, allowing the operation of the different components to be controlled in real time, preventive maintenance to be carried out and interaction with field operators.
- Maintenance of the electricity grid, that enables all the installations to be constantly inspected and reviewed. It consists of a predictive, preventive, corrective plan for the sub-stations and distribution centres that supply the city of Barcelona, its high-, medium- and low-voltage lines and their respective transformation centres.
Special emphasis will be placed on the development of special urban plans, such as the 22@ district, La Marina del Prat Vermell or the La Sagrera-Sant Andreu sector.
To summarise, the 2023 City Plan hinges on three very defined axes:
- Renovation and automation of the grid to improve the quality of supply (that is, fewer breakdowns and when they occur, they last a shorter time).
- Digitalisation of the grid to allow the incorporation and management of renewable energies in the city of Barcelona, such as self-consumption connections or the deployment of charging stations for electric vehicles.
- Strengthening the grid to support electrification of homes and the economic activities undertaken in the city, with the aim of promoting a reduction of CO2 emissions in order to achieve the carbon neutrality projected by the European Union and the City Council of Barcelona.
About Endesa
Endesa is the largest electricity company in Spain and the second largest in Portugal. The company is also the second largest gas operator in the Spanish market. Endesa operates an end-to-end generation, distribution and marketing business. Through Endesa X it also offers value-added services aimed at the electrification of energy usage in homes, companies, industries and public administrations. Endesa is firmly committed to the United Nations SDGs and strongly supports the development of renewable energies through Enel Green Power España, the digitalisation of grids through e-distribution, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The Endesa Foundation is also active in CSR-related matters. Our workforce numbers around 9,260 employees. Endesa is a division of Enel, the largest electricity group in Europe.