RESILIENCE WITHIN ENDESA TO ANTICIPATE A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

The word resilience is a term that comes from the Latin resilire, which means “jump back, bounce.” Resilience is the ability to overcome critical moments and unexpected and unusual situations, to finally return to normal.

In these times of constant change, it is important that companies know how to adapt to these changes. In this way, instead of generating a negative impact, changes can become an opportunity for the future.

“If the pace of change within an organization is lower than the environment, I am convinced that the end of the company is in sight.” – Jack Welch.

That is why e-distribución has decided to implement this concept in its new Network Digital Twin project (NDT). In NDT, there are about 20 initiatives to improve and intelligently upgrade the power grid.

A Crisis Table has been developed, that will allow the Control Room to manage crisis situations efficiently through the visualization of the affected area in real-time, network assets and information and approximate location of operators.

The technology that will be used are:

· VR glasses to attend meetings with other workers without being in the same place,

· AR glasses to be able to project the real-time situation of the network on interactive tables and to be able to act more quickly and accurately,

· Remote assistance to be able to control the problem from the Control Room.

Another example that reflects this anticipation in Spain (since in Europe it is already a fact) is the detection possibilities of the bidirectional electric network.

Traditionally, the energy was originated from the power generation plants and this was distributed through networks to the different cities or towns. Citizens were only consumers.

Nowadays, thanks to PV’s plants and vertical turbines in homes, these users can become prosumers, store energy and also inject it into the network. To guarantee the correct service of the electrical networks, e-distribución installs dynamic parameter sensors that are capable of increasing the capacity of the network cabling. The consequence of all these innovations is increasing grid resilience.

Smart grids have information and control elements in the operations centres, which allow knowing and interacting with the network remotely. Therefore, these projects have the objective of anticipating to new technological solutions in the market and being able to implement them by monitoring the network and its elements.

Apart from these two cases, e-distribución continues to work and seek innovative projects based on resilience and new technologies that allow distribution system operators to anticipate future unexpected situations. We cannot know exactly what will happen in the future, but what we can do for sure is to be prepared for it.