Iberdrola partners with Volue to digitalise hydropower production planning

Spain’s Iberdrola signed a framework agreement with Volue for the short-term production planning and optimisation of its power plant portfolio, starting with hydropower.

Iberdrola is one of the world’s biggest electricity utilities by market capitalisation. This digitalisation journey is intended to enhance the management of its 160 hydropower plants, Volue said.

The goal is to put in place a solution to support the market bidding and dispatching processes that unlock the flexibility of the generation portfolio and boosts the digitalisation that the energy management processes require in the green transition.

The project started with a proof-of-concept two years ago. The Volue team will configure its off-the-shelf Smart Power software and adapt it to Iberdrola’s business processes. Through a standard software suite, Iberdrola will be able to optimally manage the production of its hydropower plants across all the power markets in Iberia, both exchange (OMIE) and TSO (REE and REN) markets, according to a release.

Volue software is a flexible solution that can be configured to manage all processes of the Iberian power market, the company said. The processes are modelled on top of a common platform and the software seamlessly manages the relationship between energy market bidding units (UOF), TSO production units (UP) and physical units (UFI).

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Energy management is at the core of Iberdrola’s business and Volue supports all energy management business processes, including short-term production planning, creation of bidding strategies, and trading and scheduling for all the energy markets where Iberdrola is active.

Spain has placed the energy transition at the core of its energy and climate policies and aims to achieve climate neutrality before 2040. Hydropower plants are key to the energy transition because they provide precious, large-scale flexibility to compensate for the high intermittency of other renewable resources.

Volue works on energy, power grid, water and infrastructure projects and is headquartered in Oslo, Norway.

Iberdrola supplies energy to almost 100 million people in dozens of countries. With a focus on renewable energy, smart networks and smart solutions for customers, Iberdrola’s main markets include Europe (Spain, the UK, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and Greece), the US, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.

Originally published on hydro-review.com