As a Platinum Partner of Enlit Africa, the company will showcase its solutions to accelerate the transformation of the continent’s power distribution sector

Overcoming current challenges to foster electrification in Africa

Macro-economic trends including dynamic economic and population growth, rapid urbanisation, and an expanding middle class with changing lifestyles, are all providing Africa with promising opportunities for achieving long-term economic and social development.

Despite this favorable context, the lack of universal access to energy is still a crucial challenge. Over 600-million people mostly located in rural sub-Saharan Africa still do not have access to reliable and affordable energy, reflected by an electrification rate at just about 40% – the world’s lowest.  

The huge amount of renewable energy resources available in the continent presents a unique opportunity to provide reliable and affordable access to electricity, while leapfrogging towards sustainable energy systems.

But this challenge requires an integrated electrification strategy, scaling up investments not only to install new renewable capacity but also to adapt and expand grid infrastructures.

African transmission and distribution networks require significant upgrades: on one side, they need to keep pace with the forecasted growth of population and demand for electricity in the continent while, on the other side, they need to guarantee a reliable service – which today is very unstable and with high losses (up to 29%).

Also, low customer satisfaction, together with socioeconomic and governance factors, is giving rise to energy theft and credit risk, reducing revenues for utilities. All this implies that investments in grid extensions and connections are difficult to sustain financially resulting, then, in an infrastructure which is aging or inadequate, due to a general lack of repair and maintenance.

Gridspertise’s solutions for revenue protection and total costs optimisation

With its mission of being a trusted partner for utilities worldwide, Gridspertise can support African utilities to accelerate the transformation of their networks into sustainable and reliable smart grids.

The new company born out of Enel, the world’s largest privately-owned operator of power distribution grids with more than 20 years of expertise in the field, offers cutting-edge and flexible solutions to address some of the main challenges for Africa: revenue protection, power reliability improvement, maintenance efficiency and fast response and restoration.

Revenue Protection

Gridspertise’s ecosystem of smart meters, field devices as well as HES and MDM systems, can support utilities in managing electricity demand more effectively and efficiently, and in reducing technical losses.

Leveraging granular consumption data, these solutions increase grid reliability, allowing for real-time monitoring of electricity use, advanced management of grid’s technical parameters and immediate detection of faults and outages. They also improve billing data collection efficiency and enable data-driven inspection through energy balance and big-data analytics, as well as allow advanced anti-tampering functionalities and evolved fraud detection. Furthermore, these solutions include tools to remotely execute work orders, increasing efficiency of field operations.

Power reliability improvement

Thanks to the Grid Automation Management solution, it is possible to tackle effectively power interruptions and outages enabling an advanced fault location to identify power supply interruptions, improving grid reliability.

Further, through the integration with remotely controlled devices and protections in the field, the system also supports the remote optimised isolation of faults and execution of network reconfiguration and self-healing. This solution is retrofit compatible with legacy SCADA systems.

Maintenance efficiency

The prompt identification of vegetation and other elements that can interfere with distribution networks is a key driver to guarantee reliable and continuous power and optimise maintenance costs. Gridspertise’s Network Digital Twin® suite creates a virtual replica of the electric grid and components by acquiring and processing datasets of lidar, images and sensors. Through its 3D viewer and computer vision functions, it facilitates vegetation management and predictive maintenance. This tool prevents power outages and streamlines maintenance activities through target interventions.

Fast response and restoration

The Gridspertise’s enablers for a prompt and safe intervention in case of outages are the digital Enhanced Workforce applications. The entire network cartography is available through a smartphone app even in augmented reality and can be navigated offline in real time, from a national scale to a single user view. Among its features, it manages LV grid connections directly in the field. The ecosystem of applications allows prompt interventions in case of outages, safe training for field workers through virtual and augmented reality and streamlining field operations.

Enlit Africa

On 7-9 June 2022 Gridspertise will take part for the first time at Enlit Africa, the continent’s premier event for the entire power, energy, and water value chain. This event is a staple platform leading the conversation on transforming Africa’s energy sector through business-based experiences, expert stakeholders, and industry representatives.

Gridspertise will showcase its solutions at Booth B125 and is looking forward to becoming a trusted partner for African utilities.