News

Iberdrola's global innovation and smart grid centre in Bilbao continues to advance proposals to maximise the potential of smart grids to electrify the economy and create jobs and to contribute to the development of the next generation of these smart grids. 

The Iberdrola group’s distributor, i-DE, proposed a technological challenge of innovation in smart grids through PERSEO, a platform that aims to facilitate access to the technologies and businesses of the future while fostering a global ecosystem of start-ups with a focus on sustainability. The winner was the Asturian start-up Plexigrid, based in Gijón, Spain and Stockholm, Sweden.

In collaboration with the BAT B Accelerator Tower –Bizkaia International Entrepreneurship Centre–, a search and selection process was carried out for the best solutions globally. It culminated with the B Acceleration Week, the largest innovation and entrepreneurship event held to date in northern Spain. During the event, i-DE's technical team was able to learn first-hand about 6 of the 30 solutions presented by the different companies participating in the challenge, as well as to exchange knowledge and experiences with other innovation companies in the region. 

As the chosen start-up, Plexigrid will have the opportunity to deploy a pilot test within the challenge with i-DE, will become part of the BAT Community, and will be invited to participate in a personalised acceleration programme to boost its growth, within the framework of collaboration between Iberdrola and BAT.

The challenge launched through PERSEO consisted of planning new scenarios in the electricity grid, making the most of the available capacity of the digitised grid, using data and AI techniques. Digital solutions were sought to model new demand scenarios (consumption and generation) in the grid with self-consumption, storage and access flexibility to forecast its operational behaviour and then plan its investments, guaranteeing grid capacity, assuming reasonable demand for electricity distribution, with a five to ten year time horizon.

Among others, these scenarios had to take into account the evolution and geolocation of:

• Current electricity demand, generation and self-consumption 
• Electrical storage (domestic, industrial, utility, BESS, etc.)
• New emerging demand (short term): electric mobility, heating and cooling, decarbonisation of current industrial processes, etc.
• New demand in the medium and long term: digital electrification, new consumption and generation associated with technological developments and/or emerging business models (e.g. artificial intelligence, e-fuels, green hydrogen, etc.).

GSGIH AND PERSEO Iberdrola Ventures

The Global Smart Grids Innovation Hub (GSGIH) is a pole to attract talent and promote emerging technologies that will enable the energy transition, maximising the use of renewables, fully integrating energy storage systems and optimising access to new uses of electricity, such as mobility and air conditioning.

Iberdrola and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, which together with the energy company is promoting this public–private collaboration framework, have so far brought together the capacities of more than 100 industrial companies, universities and technology centres, which contribute their technological capacity, industrial character and research experience. 
Iberdrola's commitment to a sustainable energy model is part of its PERSEO programme to promote the development of start-ups and innovative industrial companies working in new areas of electrification.

Since its creation in 2008, PERSEO has invested more than 200 million euros in businesses that develop innovative technologies, focusing on those that improve the energy sector’s sustainability through greater electrification and decarbonisation of the economy. Through Perseo Venture Builder, industrial initiatives are launched in energy transition to create new business models that contribute to electrification in sectors that are difficult to decarbonise.

About the BAT B Accelerator Tower and the B Acceleration Week

BAT B Accelerator Tower is the spearhead of a national project that aims to put Bizkaia on the international entrepreneurship map. The backing of major Basque institutions aims to make BAT B Accelerator Tower a unique centre in the world, capable of bringing together public tools at the service of entrepreneurship and innovation, together with the differential services and international network of PwC and collaborations with international partners such as Talent Garden and Impact Hub.  Aiming to be the most important innovation hub in Southern Europe and the best connected, B Accelerator Tower is a point of concentration and traction for entrepreneurial talent and open innovation, where start-ups, corporates, investors and the administration work together.

The B Acceleration Week, after its first edition, has positioned itself as the most important entrepreneurship and innovation event held to date in BAT B Accelerator Tower and one of the most important on the national scene. This meeting marked a milestone in the field of start-ups and innovation in the Basque Country. 

It has all been possible thanks to collaboration with strategic members of the BAT such as Iberdrola, as well as other international agents such as Pegasus Tech Ventures and Google, which have made it possible to generate a high-impact event for the regional ecosystem, in which + 500 participants from + 100 companies and + 30 nationalities were able to exchange knowledge and generate new opportunities for innovation and business.