The company plans to spend E140 million on R&D in its renewable and deregulated power business areas, while E50 million will be spent on research in the regulated business, leaving E35 million for other areas such as information technology.
Iberdrola’s R&D initiatives in the renewables area will reportedly focus on the optimization of the least developed technologies, such as solar thermal, biomass and wave energy. The initiative will also focus on new transmission infrastructure that will bring renewable energy to the grid.
In the unregulated electricity business, Iberdrola plans to launch projects in the operation and maintenance of power plants in ways that increase their efficiency and in clean-energy technologies such CO2 sequestration.
The utility’s R&D efforts in the regulated electricity business will be aimed at improving the quality of service and will entail work on improving the integration of compact substations. It also prescribes increasing the capacity and reliability of overhead power lines and developing new underground lines with higher yields.
