Endesa invested €418mn in Spanish digital grids and e-mobility

In 2022, Spanish utility Endesa invested nearly half a billion euros in electrification, digital grids and e-mobility. This was 47% of all investments made by the utility that year.

€418 million ($442 million) was invested through Endesa’s grids subsidiary, e-Distribución, to digitalise and improve the resilience of the distribution grid.

The investment figure represents an increase of 10% over the previous year and accounts for 47% of all investments made by Endesa in distribution last year, which totalled €889 million ($941 million).

The investment from the Spanish utility company was directed into smart grid development to increase renewable energy penetration, distributed generation and electric mobility.

In upgrading existing infrastructures, the utility also saw eight new substations and more than 1,300km of new and refurbished lines established across its grid.

Grid operation

In a grid digitalisation and automation push, the utility installed remote controls in medium voltage, enabling Endesa’s control centres to perform automatic operations without having to move equipment to the field.

The time saved in equipment travel and incident detection translates into an average reduction of 20% in the disruption time of supply to customers.

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E-distribución has already installed more than 33,000 remote controls throughout its grid, 4,200 of which have been deployed in the last year with an investment of close to €100 million.

In 2022 more than 1.6 million remote or automatic actions have been executed to guarantee the electricity supply.

Sensors and improving infrastructure

Another of the company’s focal points is the deployment of LVS (Low Voltage Supervisor) devices in the transformation centres.

These devices collect network information such as voltage levels, intensity or temperature to improve infrastructure management, detect fraud, assess the capacity available to connect new supply points, reduce repair time and analyse incidents to identify problems in the grid and avoid future breakdowns.

In addition to these initiatives, there has been a reinforcement and expansion of existing facilities that and distributed 131.8GWh of electricity, 0.5% more than in the previous year.

In 2022, e-distribución commissioned eight new substations and refurbished 125, reaching a total of 1,331 substations throughout Andalusia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and Catalonia.

The investment executed by Endesa last year will continue in the coming years: between 2023 and 2025, Endesa plans to invest a total of €2.6 billion ($2.8 billion) in its distribution grid.

42% of this will be allocated to its digitalisation in order to improve action on the ground, interaction with the customer and grid maintenance and operation.