San Vicente del Monte (Valdáliga) is the first municipality in northern Spain to have this innovative technology

Viesgo has carried out a groundbreaking pilot project thanks to which the two hundred inhabitants of San Vicente del Monte, belonging to the Valdáliga City Council (Cantabria), have seen their electrical grid infrastructure reinforced. The technological solution deployed ensures the electricity supply of their homes against a possible breakdown in the electrical grid. Furthermore, it is clean, sustainable and respectful with the environment. Hence, this municipality becomes pioneer in the north of Spain and other towns will soon join this cutting-edge response effective and efficient.

This is the first Energy Storage project of this nature to be developed by Viesgo and at national level it is also one of the first to be connected to a distribution grid with end customers.

Viesgo has made an investment of 225,000 euros in this pilot project and the execution has last four months. The storage consists of collecting energy at a certain moment to be used in the future, when it is necessary.

This pilot is connected to the low voltage grid (400 V) of the San Vicente de Monte transformation center and its main technical characteristics are 250 kVA of power and 232 kWh of energy. This means that, for an average consumption of 50 kWh in San Vicente del Monte during the day, we can guarantee the supply to this town for approximately 5 hours.

Until now, villages that due to their orography or distance from urban centers have suffered a breakdown in their electrical infrastructure have had to wait several hours for supply to be restored. This is because operators have to travel there and find the place of the fault location to solve it. Viesgo, relying on ZIGOR Corporation’s innovative technology, has eliminated this supply cut-off time, contributing to an exceptional quality of service and customer comfort.

Thanks to this project, a town of 35 houses, two rural inns and a summer bar located half way up the Sierra del Escudo de Cabuérniga, such as San Vicente del Monte, has a lithium battery storage system managed by a converter. Its operation is very simple although it has complex technological development: the system monitors the quality of the energy supplied by the grid at all times, so that, in the event of a breakdown or power outage, it automatically sends a warning to the control center that Viesgo has located in the PCTCAN, which starts the corresponding operation to resolve the incident. At the same time, the system automatically switches to supplying these customers with the energy stored in the lithium batteries, thus continuing the supply of energy until the main supply is restored.

San Vicente del Monte, like many towns in our national geography, has a significant increase in population in the summer season. In this sense, their consumption is irregular, they can register consumption below 10 kW and in summer they can have consumption points of 70 kW. The system has also been prepared to support the conventional grid and prevent it from suffering incidents or breakdowns in the case of energy demand excess.

Ambitious and future project

Viesgo aims to be a benchmark in energy transition, promoting renewable energy and digitization. In this sense, innovation is one of its milestones; hence, it invests in new technologies to achieve digital transformation and modernization.

Proof of this is this innovative project, which has had the collaboration of the local administration and ZIGOR Corporation, a company that has designed the technological solution and has taken care of installing the infrastructure required by the project.

The assembly of the storage system has taken care of its integration into the green and mountainous environment of the area. The container has been treated externally so that it has minimal visual impact on the green space where it has been located.

Taking into account the success achieved in San Vicente del Monte, VIESGO plans to implement this solution in other towns in its distribution area, which spans Cantabria, Asturias, Lugo and northern Castilla y León.

Main technical features:

• Peak shaving of the demand on the town transformer. Thus, the instantaneous power consumption of the transformer remains stable, improving the performance of the transformer.
• Demand shift. When the town does not consume much power, the batteries are charged and when the requested power is very high, the batteries come into operation.
• Voltage regulation. If the voltage fluctuates due to excess consumption in the line, the system can consume or inject power to give stability to the voltage value.

The energy storage system can be a suitable solution to guarantee and improve the quality of supply in certain areas, especially rural areas without double coverage, but it will also bring other advantages to the sector:

• Solutions to the variability of the system due to the increase in renewable energy.
• Increased grid capacity to deploy distributed generation system.
• Levelling of the demand peaks of the transformer to which it is connected.
• Increased grid efficiency.

About Viesgo

Viesgo is an electricity company that bases its business on the generation and distribution of electricity. With nearly 695,000 clients in the north of Spain and an approximate production of 1,400 MW. A large part of this production comes from clean and renewable sources positioning Viesgo as a fundamental actor in the energy transition. The company employs more than 600 highly qualified professionals, in addition to another 1,500 people who work indirectly in the company.

Distribution is the cornerstone of their business. The function of the distribution company is to transport the energy to households and businesses through the physical infrastructure. A service that offers thanks to an extensive grid that exceeds 31,000 km and is characterized by its high reliability and quality.