The Canary Islands prepare for the energy transition. Endesa just opened this monday Control Center of the electrical grid Canary IslandsTogether 2.3 million euro investment, most state-of-the-art national. Endesa Infrastructures and Networks General Manager José Manuel Revuelta said that Endesa’s “It places the Canary Islands in a very important place on the map. energy transitionHe also highlighted the effort to prepare the network in the Islands so that it can “support the promotion of self-consumption and electric vehicles”, which will grow exponentially over the next eight years.
“The National Plan provides for: There will be around five million by 2030 of the electric vehicles“And probably this estimate can be exceeded because there is more awareness of electrification because of an environmental issue and we need to be prepared for everything to work,” he said. The crucial deployment of the electric vehicle and grid is not ready and therefore it is a very investment-intensive industry and the cooperation of the administrations is very necessary,” he said.
In fact, Miguel Ángel Pérez, Deputy Minister for Combating Climate Change and Ecological Transformation of the Canary Islands Government, and Augusto Hidalgo, the mayor of the capital, attended the event. On behalf of the company, José Manuel Revuelta; Pablo Casado, Managing Director of Endesa in the Canary Islands, and Carlos Lafoz and Saúl Barrio, directors of Distribution and Production in the Canary Islands.
the latest technology
The new Canary Islands power grid Control Center is equipped with the latest technology. In these facilitiescontrolled, supervised and managed Any event occurring within 26,000 kilometers medium and low voltage power lines distributed throughout the Canary Islands.. Another of its actions is directed towards all operations and operations carried out to balance electricity generation and demand at nine thermal power plants, Gorona del Viento hydro-wind power station, El Hierro and other renewable power plants.
The new unit went into operation at the beginning of the year, but the health restrictions of the pandemic and stringent controls implemented by the company to protect the health of the team of people assigned to such a specialized service delayed the opening. In addition to the control center, there is a second emergency control center that supports the previous one and is identically equipped.l, I am ready to work at any time.
For the first time, Endesa has a regional control center where the distribution and production areas are combined in the same place, separated by a glass partition that can only be opened when necessary, thus ensuring the coordination of both teams in certain situations. . This system eliminates the use of telephone between room operators in two areas, facilitating decision making, immediacy, operability and teamwork.
The Control Center is the neuralgic point where the correct functioning of transformation, transport and distribution is ensured. electric power. It is a living space 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The human team includes a total of 28 operators (16 in distribution and 12 in production), a significant number of whom work in closed rotating shifts to ensure uninterrupted service.
No one in La Palma lacked the light
Jose Manuel Revuelta “The island’s electricity grid has 99.9% reliability”. “Progress in the deployment of this Control Center and other aspects such as digitization means that we are preparing for electrification without any problems. Electrification is pushing us to be more efficient and we have implemented the latest developments in communication with this Control Center. Our network on the islands and the efforts of our human staff have “It allows us to be prepared for unexpected events, such as at La Palma volcano. Despite the enormity of the disaster, no one was without electricity in La Palma. Palm” states.
Distribution operators are responsible for constantly monitoring the status of their allocated grid in order to deliver electricity to consumption points with the best possible quality and safety conditions. In the case of the Canary Islands, they control and supervise 26,000 kilometers of medium and low voltage electricity grids..
Most technicians assigned to this service have a university degree in Engineering, usually an Electrical specialization. It is a highly qualified staff who works with all their senses to each of the operations. Play Very precise and millimetric actions to ensure the quality of supply or to recover the network in the event of an incident.
Before control room technicians can operate the network autonomously, they go through a tight loop. six-month theoretical and practical apprenticeship. “It should be noted that the error rates per operation in the Distribution room are about two or three errors per 100,000 maneuvers performed and these are normally errors without consequences”, explains the Distribution area manager in the Canary Islands. Juan Carlos Lafoz.
Likewise, since these centers constitute an important point in the electrical system, they have a series of protection measures to ensure their operation by automatic switching, by switching with more than one electricity source when necessary; Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), through batteries and other energy storage elements and generator sets, which are activated in case of continued power outage.
Juan Carlos Lafoz explains:Endesa is making a lot of progress automate and digitize our networks. “Remote control makes response time much faster, as it speeds up the location of the fault in the event of an event and also allows remote management of the network.”
This year, the Canary Islands have already achieved 20% automation, meaning that one in five conversion centers is already remotely controlled. Adding to this factor is the introduction of sensor elements that provide valuable information about what is happening in low-voltage networks in 40 percent of centers.
thermal power plants
On the other hand, a dialogue is being conducted from the Production Control Center to collect and transmit the information exchanged with the System Operator (REE) with nine thermal power plants in the Canary Islands. There is a visualization of the main parameters of six electrical systems. Canary Islands, Lanzarote-Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro. In addition, the coupling and separation order of the groups is confirmed, the innovations produced according to the availability of the groups are compiled and the correct operation of the automatic frequency control is checked. Another of the actions is to coordinate the discharges affecting the positions of the Transmission Network with the effects on the plants.
“First of all, the Control Center monitors that the frequency is as stable as possible, which is the best indicator of the right balance between energy production and demand. The penetration of renewable resources exposes thermal power plant groups to a significant effort to regulate the variations of renewable energy and maintain the quality of supply for the end user”.
The new control system allows the main parameters of electrical systems to be observed and to take action from the facilities in case of any deviations.
this Events originating from the Control Center at Endesa’s headquarters in the capital may vary from a planned group in the program not being present prior to the merger.until the untimely stoppage of a group operating in a way that may or may not affect supply. In all these cases, Control Center technicians evaluate the available options to replace this unused power and the new program specified by the system operator is transmitted to the facilities.
Five control centers in Spain
The five electricity grid control centers (COREs) owned by Endesa in the regions where it operates constitute an important point in the electrical system as they allow the network monitoring of more than 316,500 kilometers of lines managed by the company. Eight times to circumnavigate the globe with 1,326 substations and 130,575 conversion centers added.
Moreover, these control centers are directly connected to Endesa’s call center where notifications come from customers who notice any consumable incidents, to offer unified management of all company resources. In this line, these control centers also provide a special technical information service for municipalities.in order to coordinate the management of possible incidents with the technical services of the municipalities; as well as for local and regional emergency services and State security forces.
Over the past year, e-distribución has performed more than 3 million maneuvers from control centers, of which 1.62 million are automated.