Coronavirus accelerates European utilities’ digital drive

When COVID-19 plunged Italy into lockdown, it was decision time at the Verampio power station. The control room, which runs a fleet of hydroelectric plants across the Piedmont region, hard hit by the pandemic, had to be secured to keep the lights on.
Operator Enel , Europe’s largest utility, moved quickly to create a parallel backup control room at a smaller site 30 kms (18.6 miles) away while also plugging some workers into the plant’s data base so they could work from home.
“We’d never done this sort of thing over a long period of time but it worked instantly,” said Giuseppe Serrecchia, Enel’s head of Global Power Generation Digital Hub.
“To properly respond to the challenges of COVID, we’ve boosted our overall digitalization drive.”