Italian transmission system operator Terna has launched a digital platform to connect renewable energy plants to the national transmission grid, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security. The company used a geopositioning system to locate requests to achieve its goal of connecting renewable plants to the grid.
“This initiative by Terna is very useful for transparency to effectively and efficiently managing the goals set by the challenges for the energy transition. Ambitious goals, which will provide enormous benefits for the country in terms of the environment, the economy and energy security and independence. It is crucial, however, that these decarbonization goals are achieved efficiently, with the optimal use of resources,” said Francesco Del Pizzo, grid development strategies and dispatching manager at Terna.
The platform, dubbed Econnextion, centralizes all information on high-voltage connection requests from various renewable plants in the country. It allows electricity operators to check the status of new, offshore and onshore wind and photovoltaic initiatives in the region. Stakeholders will also be able to see the information on the geographic location with the help of the new tool from Terna.
Through Econnextion’s ‘Connection Requests’ section, users can filter their requests by source and can view details at municipal, provincial and regional levels using its interactive map. The platform can also help to identify areas with high density of energy plants can be identified and accordingly, plans can be created to develop the infrastructure required to attain targets for the decarbonization of the energy systems, but in a coordinated way.
Terna’s Econnextion is a tool that can help to plan for new wind power and photovoltaic plants in areas with strong potential for renewable energy without causing virtual grid saturation. It provides the elements required by sector operators for better investment planning. The platform also features a ‘Fit for 55 Target’ section, displaying crucial information on wind power and photovoltaic initiatives broken down by area and with regard to the goals set by the ‘Fit for 55’ packages for 2030, aiming for at least a 55% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 in comparison with the levels in 1990.
Terna has also released data that shows the requests from renewable plants for connection to the high-voltage grid increased to 340 GW of cumulative power, with 54% coming from wind power and 37% from solar. This is about five times higher than Italy’s target for 2030.
