Terna advances on the digitization of the grid and chooses Veneto as a laboratory of excellence for the Internet of things applied to the national electricity transmission infrastructure. but the objective is not only to improve the management and security of the grid but also to maximize the benefits from the point of view of environmental monitoring: a single infrastructure, that of Terna, will ensure both. It is for this reason that the Ad Luigi Ferraris flew to Venice and signed with the president of the Region, Luca Zaia, a memorandum of understanding for the start of an experiment on the regional electricity grid. All this is part of the strategic line aimed at sustainable development already agreed between the two partners.
How will the monitoring take place? With 500 sensors installed per hour on 26 power lines in the region and scattered between Belluno, Verona and Vicenza, at the time affected - it was 2018 - by the fury of the wind that uprooted trees, knocking down entire woods. The tower sensors are called Iot Boxes and thanks to them it becomes possible to control the network in real time, obtain immediate information on the observation of the environment and natural phenomena that are potentially harmful to the network in order to be able to intervene promptly and in a targeted way to prevent and protect the infrastructure, avoiding or reducing potential damage. The information collected by Terna travels on the Internet and is then "sorted" to internal offices or even to external entities that may be interested. Which? For example, civil protection, research institutes and local bodies for the protection and control of the climate, atmospheric variations, pollution and so on.
La collaboration between Terna and the Veneto Region it is also functional to the development of strategies – explains the press release released by the Group that manages the national electricity transmission grid – “aimed at sharing of collected data and to evaluate the feasibility of further proposals for Use Case of collective interest".
This is why the agreement, underlined the CEO Luigi Ferraris “represents a further opportunity to increase the safety and sustainability of the regional electricity grid. The current energy transition imposes new challenges and makes grid management increasingly complex and multifaceted". Putting it together, he continued, “means creating a new technological awareness with huge benefits for the electricity system and local communities".
Governor Zaia understood this well, underlining how in this case the greater safety, especially in the event of environmental emergencies, is connected with the innovation factor represented by the Internet of Things (the "dialogue of things with the Web"). “A public administrator – he concluded – must be able to count on adequate tools. In this case, the memorandum of understanding with Terna, in addition to expanding the network of collaborations, will make available millions of data to continue to guarantee the maximum efficiency of our structures, in particular of the Civil Protection, flagship recognized at national level”.
