Portugal
The Portuguese pilot includes selected distribution system infrastructures across the regions of Lisbon and Leiria. The pilot site is operated by E-Redes Portugal, the main distribution system operator in the country. Its peculiarity lies in the possibility to observe the impact of R2D2 solutions in both rural and highly urbanized contexts, as the selected assets include an overhead MV line passing through rural areas and a district substation located in a dense metropolitan environment.
Infrastructure:
E-Redes – Distribuição de Eletricidade, S.A. is responsible for managing and operating the Portuguese electrical grid at high (60 kV), medium (30 kV, 15 kV, 10 kV) and low voltage levels. The company operates a network of 232,089 km and distributes 24,000 GWh at HV/MV and 21,000 GWh at LV annually.
Two infrastructures with different characteristics have been selected for demonstration purposes:
- Óbidos (Leiria district) – One overhead MV power line spanning 45 km, with a significant portion crossing rural areas. This infrastructure supplies around 2,600 inhabitants (15,500 for the entire associated substation).
- Amadora (Lisbon Metropolitan Area) – One district MV substation feeding a highly urbanized area, operating with both overhead and underground lines. This infrastructure supplies around 24,000 inhabitants.
Labelec – Estudos Desenvolvimento e Actividades Laboratoriais S.A., a specialized laboratory and technical services company belonging to the EDP Group, provides historical data from E-Redes assets and supports data processing for the use cases demonstrated in the pilot.
Partners involved
EDP NEW is coordinating the pilot together with E-Redes Portugal, which hosts it. Labelec participates as a third party, providing essential historical data and data treatment support.
Benefits from R2D2
The Portuguese pilot aims to address key needs identified by E-Redes PT: reduction of outages, reduction of maintenance costs, and prevention of wildfires. R2D2 contributes to these objectives through:
- Improved reliability of overhead lines thanks to advanced processing of LiDAR/visual data acquired from BRLOS drone inspections, enabling automated detection of hotspots, broken insulators, inclined pylons, rust, and vegetation risks.
- Prevention of equipment breakdowns and improved asset availability in the Amadora substation through automated and more accurate inspections.
- Extension of asset lifespan by enabling predictive maintenance based on digital twins of critical substation equipment, such as power transformers and circuit breakers.