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Iberdrola has reaffirmed its commitment to innovation, sustainability, digital transformation and knowledge in smart grids at the Startup Olé Salamanca, a major global event for tech entrepreneurship.

The head of Iberdrola's Grid business in Salamanca, Ávila and Zamora, Elsa García, and the head of Perseo – Iberdrola's Open Innovation and Investment Programme with Startups –, Óscar Cantalejo, presented this morning in the space set up by the company at Startup Olé, one of the most important international events in the entrepreneurial ecosystem being held this week in the city of Salamanca, the main innovations Iberdrola is working on and investing in.

Cantalejo stressed the company's commitment to entrepreneurs: "We’ve investing and working with start-ups since 2008 to promote a more sustainable and forward-looking industry around the energy transition, creating high quality jobs and making progress. This collaboration with start-ups is key to continue pushing the decarbonisation and electrification of the economy forward and also allows us to support Iberdrola's growth with agile and dynamic technology partners".

Elsa Garcia emphasised that "Iberdrola wants to remain at the forefront of the energy transition by developing new business and technological models in distribution grids. The electricity system is going through an unprecedented transformation and the grids are the cornerstone of the energy revolution, an essential platform for moving towards a decarbonised economy, which favours the development of an electricity system with more renewable sources, sustainable mobility, smart cities and self-consumption".

At the company's innovation space at Startup Olé, Garcia showed a 3D model of an electrical substation and represented in extended virtual reality (Digital Twin), different use cases with drones with impressive inspection videos and a pilot initiative with cutting-edge technology to insulate power lines and protect birdlife. "Pioneering technology projects, almost unnoticeable to the human eye, but which can be an effective and highly advanced solution to protect the environment," he says.

World Centre for Smart Grid Innovation

Iberdrola's Grids Business, through the Global Smart Grids Innovation Hub, has created an ecosystem to promote innovation, developing talent through collaboration with universities, offering opportunities to students and preparing future professionals.

More than 15 years innovating

Iberdrola has been innovating in the energy sector for more than 15 years through its start-up programme, PERSEO, which has invested more than €200 M in start-ups that develop innovative technologies and business models, focusing on those that improve the sustainability of the energy industry through greater electrification and decarbonisation of the economy.

The programme's ecosystem includes more than 7,500 start-ups, including unicorns - companies valued at more than $1 B.

University-Business Technology Transfer

Iberdrola, which this year is once again one of the main promoters of Startup Olé through its Energy Transition vertical, has shown in Salamanca its commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation and reaffirms its investment in digital transformation and sustainability and its collaboration with the University of Salamanca, where it actively promotes the University-Business technology transfer, in a close alliance for the launch of R&D&I projects and training initiatives in areas of common interest.