Team members receive daily feedback from operators on shift to ensure any changes to workload are accounted for, maintaining the highest quality standards
Enel expands remote centers of excellence. (Credit: Enel Spa.)
The reorganization of teams and shifts, the creation of backup rooms, and remote control. These are the solutions implemented by Enel Green Power to face this emergency situation and to continue to manage all production units remotely.
The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present. Our journey of constant innovation and the digital solutions we’ve developed over the years, both infrastructural, with the Cloud, and with equipment for our personnel (smartphones and laptops to work from home), are now enabling us to manage the COVID-19 crisis better and optimize the role of control rooms: the mega computers that allow us to balance flows between electrical grid demand and the availability of renewable source supply, with benefits for the stability of the grid itself and for customers.
In addition to safety measures for the health of our colleagues and collaborators, Enel Green Power has enhanced its control rooms, duplicating shift lines, providing backup rooms, even in homes, and using all the devices available for remote control and
implementing comprehensive solutions to guarantee absolute and effective protection against any cyber attacks.
The measures we’ve implemented in the Control Rooms of our renewable plants around the world have allowed EGP to manage all our production units, as well as electrical substations, remotely 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In Italy, the number of plants (more than 500) and connected infrastructure (dams, channels, tunnels) make remote operation especially critical. This is carried out by five Control Rooms, in different areas of the country. The operation of each control room has been doubled, with a main control room and a backup one. Here, to face the emergency, shifts have been reorganized and teams in both the main and backup control room have been doubled. Secure remote access systems have been provided to work from home.
At the Andover Control Room, in Massachusetts, the communication between control room and field teams has remained consistent, thanks to the digital tools implemented prior the pandemic such as laptops with virtual machines and remote connection software. Team members receive daily feedback from operators on shift to ensure any changes to workload are accounted for, maintaining the highest quality standards.
A positive example of this is the Control Room in Chile, the only one able to monitor all four technologies at once, thanks to the most cutting-edge automation technologies and communication and data visualization systems. Since its inauguration, the room has been able to guarantee and support the production of renewable energy throughout the country at every moment, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In this health emergency, we are again demonstrating outstanding resilience, which allows us to adapt and react successfully to the challenges that arise along our way, ensuring the production of the sustainable energy that communities need, now more than ever.
Source: Company Press Release