n the design of a wind farm there must be a thorough analysis of the terrain, interferences, building works, close living spaces, etc. The IT applications are heavy and not functional for deployment in the field. There are no agile applications to dispose of a previous digital map where you can include additional information (geolocalization, pictures, panoramas, etc.) with which to work from the office or from the field.

 

Predicting how the rainfall will affect a location allows to anticipate to hydrological calculations, ditch executions, road water pumping… with a 3D digital map with topographical data and terrain composition we could have a rainfall simulation.

 

Once the wind farm is live, remote surveillance is necessary in the face of growing vegetation, fires, construction or infrastructure modifications… or to detect any alteration that could affect these assets.

 

At ACCIONA we are seeking startups that can develop solutions for advanced management of O&M operations. How can we improve efficiency in inspection and maintenance? How can we anticipate to damages done by climate conditions? How can we improve plant growth and its invasion of the infrastructures? How can we improve prediction in maintenance?

The European Commission has made a firm commitment to a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. To achieve this target, the European Green Deal contains a series of measures and policies that will be key to the construction of a modern economy that is efficient in the use of resources, and also competitive. This Deal endorses and speeds up the process of modernisation and transformation of the economy that the European Union began a few years back.

In 2005, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) was approved and implemented. It enabled plants covered by the scheme to reduce their emissions by around 35% between 2009 and 2019. The legislative framework was reviewed in 2018 to speed up emission reductions and accelerate the need of the industrial and energy sectors to apply  measures and investments to deploy innovative technologies that could minimise their carbon footprint.

Due to the fact that the requirements in emission reductions are increasingly demanding, the price of CO₂ emission rights has increased over the last 18 months, from €35 per tonne of CO₂ to almost €60. In this context, industry needs to implement an ambitious decarbonization strategy for its production processes that will allow it to adapt, not only to the climate targets pursued by Europe, but also to the challenges posed by the global market.

The construction of a carbon-free economy poses major technological challenges in a number of processes and sectors. Heat generation processes for industry represent almost 20% of global energy consumption, with an impact in terms of CO₂ emissions. Heat represents almost 75% of the energy demand of industry, which is covered by fossil fuels to 90%. Industries or industrial processes that use heat at medium temperature, such as construction, the food sector, textiles and manufacturing, could reduce their emissions by 90% through electrification based on clean energy sources. Their energy consumption profile makes them ideal for testing Renewable Power-to-X solutions that could be scalable to other kinds of applications.

ACCIONA is launching this challenge to identify Renewable Power-to-X solutions that help our industrial clients using heat at medium temperature to reduce their carbon footprint through the application of alternative technologies to generate heat without CO₂ emissions. Proposed solutions that have the potential to facilitate the re-use of residual heat will be considered positively.

 

The developers of the proposals can either present a comprehensive solution or technologies that, thanks to their hybridization with others, comply with the objective pursued by ACCIONA. If a comprehensive solution is not presented, the proposal should indicate other technological needs required to create the solution.

The world wind power market has quadrupled in size over the last decade and has consolidated itself as one of the most competitive energy sources in the world in cost terms, reaching 743 GW in installed capacity.

ACCIONA Energía builds, operates and maintains wind farms in 25 countries worldwide. With installed capacity of 8,759 MW (2021) and 230 plants in service, wind power represents 80% of the electricity generated by the company every year.

In an electricity generation plant the main risk factor for people (personnel, maintenance technicians and others) is electrical contact. Even though the plants comply with design regulations and standards, defective use -or not following established safety standards- can lead to accidents and serious risk of injury to people. The fact that electricity cannot be perceived by the senses (it has no odour, does not emit noise and cannot be seen) is an aggravating risk factor.

Training is a key element in the prevention of electricity-related incidents, as the human factor is usually involved in 3 out of 4 accidents of this type. ACCIONA therefore considers it important to improve its equipment and systems to help people identify the presence of electric current in both interior and exterior installations, e.g. overhead and underground power lines.

Despite designs that conform to standards, training and improving signage to warn about risks, electrical risk exists both for people working in a wind farm and those outside it.

Therefore, we seek solutions (hardware, software, new materials…) that detect and signal magnetic fields and warn of the electrical risks associated with them. These solutions could be applied to:

• Closed and controlled areas that workers access to carry out operation and maintenance tasks
• Open, uncontrolled areas, for example, where there are underground power lines that third parties could come into contact with accidentally.

The solution could consist of a direct warning of an electrical risk (e.g. a buzzer or a flashing light) or an indirect one (change of status in the presence or absence of current).

The energy sector is immersed in a complex process of transformation. The regulatory changes required to respond to decarbonisation targets and the rapid penetration and evolution of digital technologies is redefining the way in which energy is generated, transported and consumed. This speeds up the transition to a digital, decentralised electric power grid in which distributed energy resources will play a key role in the optimisation of the grid.

 

As a result of the electrification of the economy, it is estimated that it will be necessary to generate 70,000 TWh to respond to energy demands by 2050. This is almost three times current capacity; two-thirds of the total will be covered by variable renewable energy sources. In this scenario, the electric power system needs to address the challenge of responding to a complex demand model, with a distributed generation mix that guarantees stable supplies. Therefore, the transformation of the energy system not only involves the deployment of renewable energy assets, it requires the implementation of physical and digital solutions to equip the system with a high degree of flexibility.

The continuous fall in the cost of renewables and the policies and measures put in place to achieve a climate-neutral economy by 2050 have speeded up the decentralisation of the system, incentivising the deployment of smaller and highly digitized generation plants adapted to the energy demands of end users. The distributed generation market reached 217.8 billion dollars in 2020, and it is expected to hit 386.7 billion dollars in 2027. This distributed generation of energy model plays an essential role in the development of a fully decarbonized power system, and it is positioning itself as one of the key pillars in the new value chain.

 

The digitization of distributed generation assets has shown itself to have great potential for building more efficient, flexible and resilient energy systems. The deployment of this type of energy means that not only a digital model of assets that comprise the grid and its operation is possible, it opens the door to two-way management of energy, transforming passive assets into resources that play an active role in the new energy ecosystem, creating opportunities for the development of new business models.

 

Adding this digital layer also enables the aggregated management of distributed resources through Virtual Power Plants (VPP), which appear as solutions with the potential to ensure grid stability while maximising the economic value of the distributed resources. Having tools to monitor and manage VPPs will enable the implementation of design strategies to monetize the capacity of distributed assets to provide the necessary flexibilityfor the electric power system.

ACCIONA is launching this challenge to identify tools and solutions that enable the aggregated management, operation and organisation of distributed resources in order to provide advanced services to the grid. The solutions proposed should be oriented towards building and scaling up Virtual Power Plants:

• With granular and aggregated control of the assets that comprise them
• Their operation strengthens the stability and flexibility of the grid in real time
• They have the capacity to scale up the model and dynamically integrate new distributed resources.

If the proposed solution allows research and testing of new business models and creates value for the stakeholders that make up the electric power system, this will be taken into account.

The carbon footprint (CF) is the total quantity of greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) caused directly or indirectly by the activities of an organisation or that accumulated through the phases of the life cycle of the products it manufactures or uses in its operations. The main greenhouse gases are defined in the Kyoto Protocol: carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrogen oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulphur hexafluorides (SF₆) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃).

The calculation of the carbon footprint of business activities helps to identify high-emission areas that can be eliminated, mitigated or improved. Basically. the calculation of a carbon footprint is an indicator of sustainable development.

The calculation should be made by taking into account both direct emissions (those generated by the organisation itself through its activities) and indirect emissions (those generated by stakeholders in their relationship with the organisation). The GHG Protocol defines and classifies the direct and indirect emissions of an organisation as follows:

• Scope 1: All the direct greenhouse gas emissions generated by an organisation’s activity.
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the consumption of electricity, heat or steam acquired from suppliers.
• Scope 3: Other indirect emissions from organisations that do not belong to the organisation but have an impact on its activities as suppliers.

At present, the entire ACCIONA Group measures its carbon footprint within Scope 1 and Scope 2. However, as happens in other organisations, the real challenge lies in calculating Scope 3, which can reach 20% of total emissions generated. In other words, stakeholders should notify ACCIONA of the generation of indirect greenhouse gases that have an impact on their business relationship.

We are seeking solutions that allow us to monitor and calculate emissions from ACCIONA’s business activities and those of its stakeholders. The latter should provide granular visibility of the emissions associated with each process, in order to detect areas where actions related to decarbonization can be proposed. That these solutions allow the quantitative impact of incorporating decarbonization solutions into the value chain of the company analysed is a factor that is taken into account. Bearing in mind that ACCIONA generates 100% renewable energy, the inclusion of the calculation of emissions avoided through sustainable generation should be included or considered. These solutions may be at different stages of development, but they should be in the minimum viable product (MVP) phase at least.

Individual self-consumption has been seen to be particularly competitive in the industrial sector, in which more and more large companies choose to produce their own energy to reduce the costs associated with their electricity consumption and emissions derived from their productive activity. Making progress towards collective self-consumption models allows several consumers to share the cost of the same generation plant, reducing the initial investment and individual risks. This opens up the self-consumption market to a wider range of industries and companies located on industrial estates that may not have the resources or space required to undertake a renewable energy generation project on their own.

 

The global collective self-consumption market is an emerging one in an initial phase, with less than 100 MW of installed capacity in projects concentrated in Australia, Switzerland, France and Germany, hotspots with favourable regulation that are currently leading the deployment of this new model.

 

Spain is making progress towards the definition of an administrative, technical and economic framework to regulate the national self-consumption market. ACCIONA, with its distributed generation solutions for self-consumption from renewable energies, has the capability to play a major role in the transformation of the present energy model.

The evolution of the regulatory framework on energy self-consumption in Spain opens up opportunities for the development of the collective self-consumption market. To develop and consolidate this market, it is essential to deploy new models of energy generation and consumption, from the perspective of exploitation of energy sources that are profitable in terms of maximising the economic value of a generation plant.

 

Collective industrial self-consumption poses a series of challenges to the operational structure of a facility: how the energy generated is shared out among offtakers (adapting to each one’s consumption profiles), how their real consumption is traced, how the energy generated and self-consumption is maximised, how it is planned, how it is managed and how surpluses are capitalised are some of the challenges to be addressed that have a direct impact on the functioning and technical/financial performance of plants. Having tools to monitor and manage these aspects will enable the design and operation of distributed resources to maximise the added value offered to shareholders.

ACCIONA launches this challenge to identify platforms for the management of collective industrial self-consumption plants that allow the optimisation of the generation and consumption model associated to the plant, with the aim of maximising its performance and profitability. The following factors will be taken into account in the proposed solutions:

• The inclusion of predictive algorithms for the plant’s generation.
• Monitoring of monthly consumption (by time band) of each offtaker, to improve accuracy when defining distribution coefficients.
• Monitoring of surpluses produced by the plant that are injected into the grid.
• Provision of granular and aggregate information on the technical and economic functioning and performance of the plant in real time. If the proposed solution includes research and the testing of new business models this will be taken into account.

Since 2011, more than 100 gigawatts of new renewable capacity has been installed year on year, surpassing the capacity added every year by fossil fuels and nuclear power. The market share of renewables increased to 29% in 2020, in comparison with 27% in 2019.  The International Energy Agency (IAE) estimates that electricity from renewable sources in 2021 will grow by more than 8% to reach 8,300 TWh, the strongest inter-annual growth since the 1970s. Two-thirds of this growth will come from photovoltaic solar and wind power.

 

The grid connection of renewable energy sources involves major challenges due to the intermittent nature of supplies. In a market in which the market share of renewables is estimated to reach 40-70% by 2050, electricity market operators and power generators need to get actions under way to ensure the stability of operations and energy supplies.

In this context, grid codes appear as a vital element for the integration of variable renewables, as they set the rules under which the electric power system operates. These take the form of a series of guidelines and requirements that solar and wind power generation plants have to comply with to connect to the grid in each region.

In the case of wind farms, compliance with grid codes is a complex undertaking, as the changes in available capacity due to fluctuations in the wind resource can create problems in terms of the quality of the energy.

 

ACCIONA has more than 8,700 MW of wind power capacity under its ownership in 14 countries (Spain, the US, Mexico and Australia, among others). The functioning and operation of each wind farm needs to be compatible with the security and stability requirements established by grid codes. These codes are specific to each country or region, as they respond to the particular nature of each electric power system. They are also subject to continuous review, as they need to evolve to adapt to the changing needs of each system.

 

Compliance with grid codes has a direct impact on the profitability of renewable assets. For example, in Australia compliance with grid codes is regulated by law and non-compliance is considered a civil offence and is subject to sanctions. Therefore, it is essential to have tools that allow us to ensure that the operation of a wind farm is in line with the stability and security requirements laid down in each place in order to maximise its performance.

ACCIONA is launching this challenge to identify the tools and/or technologies that will allow us to improve grid integration and compliance with grid codes for wind farms consisting of doubly-fed turbine technologies (type 3). The proposed solutions should:

• Be able to be modelled and simulated in software such as PSSE, digsilent and pscad
• Analyse and manage the performance of generation assets under real conditions at the turbine and wind farm levels
• Allow, define and automate strategies to maximise the performance of plants, ensuring compliance with the grid codes in force
• Include control algorithms with the parameters defined in grid codes to ensure that the operation of plants complies with established stability and security requirements. In this respect, one of the aims is to improve, in weak grid situations (SCR lower than 5), aspects such as fast voltage control at the point of connection (response time below 5 seconds), fast frequency control at the point of connection (response time below 5 and 1 seconds) and the input of reactive and active current at the wind turbine and wind farm levels (POC) at aggressive (high droop) and fast (response time below 70 microseconds) levels, and control during voltage dips
• Be adaptable and scalable for deployment in different target markets.

Tools with different degrees of technological maturity will be taken into account. The proposed solution does not need to be fully developed at the time of presenting a proposal.

The demand for energy for temporary facilities for infrastructure construction in isolated areas is covered using diesel engines. On the other hand, consumption on these projects has a demand profile that’s very different to any other system, and is connected to how the project progresses. This energy system for isolated construction projects is a micro-network that can be designed and managed in a much more efficient and sustainable manner through the integration of renewable energies, storage, digitalisation, consumption sensors, etc. However, the portability of renewable energy to supply projects is complex, costly and doesn’t guarantee to provide 100% of the energy required.

At ACCIONA, we’re looking for startups that allow us to provide sustainable energy to construction projects to reduce dependency on diesel.  How can we create a modular, transportable system that’s quick to install? How can we control intermittent renewable generation and consumption in an efficient manner? How can we integrate storage for network management? How can we create these modular, temporary systems in an isolated environment?

The energy transition is moving forwards with the electrification of consumption and the digitalisation, decentralisation and decarbonation of energy systems. These systems are ever more distributed and decentralised, with better reach and integration of renewable energies and storage. They are no longer one-way systems. Self-consumption, micro-networks and the empowerment of the consumer leads to bidirectional systems in which the management of demand has to play a relevant role in the support of the management and control of the energy network.

At ACCIONA, we’re looking for start-ups that can provide new demand control solutions, in an intelligent manner and with advanced capacities for participating in network control. How can we aggregate consumption? How can we control different loads and their demand profiles? How can we intelligently provide network management and stability services?

The increase in the population of urban centres and the development of large metropolitan areas are creating transport challenges in cities all over the world. Awareness about pollution levels in urban centres, as well as the impact of Climate Change, means that electrical transport needs to be encouraged in cities, intelligently and sustainably.

At ACCIONA, we’re looking for start-ups that can help us to design the sustainable cities of the 21st century. How can we design advanced, intelligent charging points? How can we improve the sustainability of charging points? How can we integrate generation and storage into charging points? How can we improve the management of the charging of all kinds of electrical vehicles? How can we add more value, services, and flexibility to electrical transport in cities?