Iberdrola invests €100 M in the redesign of the grid in Valencia
Iberdrola has presented its il.lumina project, in which it will invest €100 million for the redesign of the distribution network affected by Storm Dana on October 29th.
Image for illustration purposes.
Spain, Valencia: Iberdrola has presented its il.lumina project, in which it will invest €100 million for the redesign of the distribution network affected by Storm Dana on October 29th in the Valencian Community. The CEO of Iberdrola Spain, Mario Ruiz-Tagle, accompanied by Eva Mancera, CEO of i-DE, Iberdrola’s distribution company, has detailed the plan and the actions undertaken so far.
Iberdrola has created a team of 35 people dedicated exclusively to the project, divided into five operational areas under the same management. The team has seven support areas to coordinate the work of the approximately 1000 workers from contractor companies. The creation of this team is allowing i-DE to continue developing the rest of its investments in the Valencian Community normally.
At the end of 2024, Iberdrola started the different phases of the project with the recovery of the 132 kV high voltage infrastructure in the area of Catadau and Carlet and has obtained the necessary material to be able to develop it, both in the section of transformation centers, low and medium voltage network, and substations. The aim is to reach 90% of the project’s execution in 2025 and to finish it during 2026.
To be able to carry out the construction of an electrical distribution network of the future, the company will incorporate resilience measures to the infrastructures, including design changes in the assets and providing them with the latest digitalization standards that will benefit 650000 customers. The level of automation of the facilities will be increased and new intelligent transformers (i-trafo) will be incorporated, which will increase the quality of supply. Overhead power lines will be buried, while transformer substations will be raised and compacted.
The flood that occurred on October 29th in the province of Valencia left about 180000 customers in the areas of l’Horta Sud, Catadau-Carlet and Requena-Utiel-Buñol without electricity supply. i-DE mobilized roughly 500 people, including its own personnel and contractors, to restore the service and repair the installations as access to them became possible.
The company’s action and mobilization of all its resources, including the installation of more than 120 generators, made it possible to recover approximately 50% of the affected power supply in 24 hours, 85% within 48 hours. In about 72 hours, almost everything was restored.
Source: Iberdrola
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