In an exclusive interview with Francisco Donato Bergia, Director at Minsait, we look at the newest and innovative solutions on the market, which cover all the utilities processes from commercial to measurement, asset and operation management. Minsait is working with customers including Iberdrola, EDP, ENEL, and UFD to provide solutions covering: Flexibility – which addresses DERMs Management; Smart Substation – a solution with IoT and Edge Computing components used for the grid operation in a delegated and distributed way; Grid Eye – an IoT solution that enables the deployment of use cases su ..read more

Companies Enel X Global Retail and Digital Realty will collaborate to utilise data centre batteries to help balance the Irish power grid. The partnership sees Digital Realty, a global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation, and interconnection solutions, enhance its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems by using integrated batteries to provide balancing services that support grid stability. According to Digital Realty in a release, this innovative solution enables more renewable energy to be fed into the Irish power grid while allowing it to operate reliably. As mo ..read more

Gabreta Smart Grids, one of the Projects of Common Interest between Germany and the Czech Republic, has kicked off with the symbolic connection of power cables. The Gabreta project, which is being led by E.ON Group distribution companies Bayernwerk AG in Germany and EG.D in the Czech Republic, seeks to foster cross-border cooperation between the two countries with the aim to accelerate the digitalisation of the distribution grid. In particular, Gabreta Smart Grids is intended to develop a practical vision of how to fast-track the deployment of digital technologies to the distribution grid. In ..read more

Solar renewables company Infinigen Renewables and ArcLight Capital Partners have announced a power and battery infrastructure project in Puerto Rico to provide supportive flexibility and reliability to the power grid. A 15MW storage project will be paired with a 32MW solar project in the Yabucoa municipality of Puerto Rico. To bring the project online, Infinigen, a subsidiary of a fund managed by ArcLight, is partnering with FlexGen Power Systems, a battery energy storage integrator and software technology provider. The project will provide needed reliability and flexibility to the local grid ..read more

Energy technology supplier Enphase Energy and Octopus Energy have announced a strategic partnership to integrate their platforms, allowing UK retail customers to access low-cost residential energy rates, Octopus Energy clients to create VPPs, and support battery management to ease congestion on the power grid. The partners will focus on the UK deployment of Enphase IQ8 Microinverters, which provide peak AC power of up to 384W to support newer high-powered solar modules, and IQ Battery 5P, which has a modular design and 5KWh capacity. Octopus Energy’s retail customers in the United Kingdom can ..read more

In a joint effort to deliver more clean energy at a lower cost to customers, a consortium of Californian energy stakeholders, such as CEC, CPUC, CAISO, PG&E, SCE, and the California-Berkeley Energy Institute have submitted a grant application to the GRIP programme. The California Energy Commission (CEC), California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and the University of California, Berkeley Energy Institute at Haas submitted a grant application for $2 billion to ..read more

Although trying their best to be on track for Fit for 55, DSOs are dependent on the right framework conditions and adequate support to be able to live up to their role, a recent paper from the DSO Entity states. The paper, aimed to identify DSO best practices to addressing some current challenges, points to the key role – as Europe’s sector organisations have frequently highlighted – of the DSOs in achieving the region’s energy and climate objectives, with much of the decentralisation taking place on the distribution grid. However, physically enforcing and digitally smartening the power infras ..read more

Siemens Smart Infrastructure has launched Electrification X, a suite of applications to help renewable generators, TSOs, DSOs, industries and infrastructure customers to improve productivity, reliability, asset utilisation, energy efficiency and sustainable innovation. According to the smart tech major, the product is a highly scalable Internet-of-Things (IoT) SaaS offering to transform electrification infrastructure. Built on cloud services, Electrification X is designed to manage, optimise and automate the challenged electrification infrastructure of commercial, industrial and utility custom ..read more

An electric car charging trial has been jointly launched by British EV charging company Pod Point and Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, to demonstrate how EV charging can be used as a valuable flexibility source in the ESO’s Balancing Mechanism. Over 2,000 joint British Gas and Pod Point customers were recruited for the trial, which went live at the end of February 2024. The initial six-month pilot focuses on delivering flexibility services to customers using Centrica’s Demand Side Response (DSR) platform, which encourages customers to move their electricity use out of peak times to ..read more

By 2035, VPP (virtual power plant) potential in California is forecast to exceed 15% of peak demand by 2035, representing five times its current capacity, according to analysis from consultancy Brattle Group for GridLab. According to Brattle Group’s report, California’s Virtual Power Potential: How Five Consumer Technologies Could Improve the State’s Energy Affordability, more than 7,500MW of VPP capacity could be deployed cost-effectively across California over the next decade. Significantly higher than the capacity of the largest power plant in California, the figure is also higher than the ..read more