ANTARES Digital Platform

ANTARES, accelerating the development of renewable energies

Digital Renewable energy

The ANTARES digital platform was created in 2022 in line with Iberdrola's innovative drive to ensure sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness. It is a comprehensive solution that digitalises our renewable energy development in the countries where we are present and contributes to accelerating both the energy transition and decarbonisation, as well as creating economic and social value. Some of the key points of this project are included below.

Fecha

September 2024

Tiempo de lectura

Approximately 12 minutes


Foto del Autor
Ester Cámara

Business Transformation

Foto del Autor
Estefanía Segovia

Business Transformation

The energy transition towards a sustainable production and consumption model is only possible through a complete transformation of society as a whole. This change towards the decarbonisation of the economy involves several industries, especially energy, which cuts across all the others and one of the ones with the most CO2 emissions, the main greenhouse gas (GHG) that contributes to global warming.

To achieve this goal, electricity generation from renewable sources such as wind, solar, hydro and biomass, which have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels, must be increased. This clean energy also improves security of supply, diversifies the energy mix and creates opportunities for innovation and economic development. 

The decarbonisation of the energy sector must not, however, affect economic growth and universal access to energy. Increasing the volume of renewables at the required speed and according to new generation models in the face of growing energy demand poses challenges such as grid integration, regulation and agility in planning and implementation.  

Deploying more renewable energy sources faster requires developing innovative solutions to move towards a more electric, more sustainable and more accessible energy system without undermining fair access to energy. It is against this background that ANTARES, Iberdrola's digital platform to guarantee sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness in the sector, was created. 

What is ANTARES?

ANTARES is a comprehensive end-to-end platform that digitalises the management of the entire life cycle of renewable development in the countries where we are present. It is Iberdrola's digital solution focused on providing a rapid and quality response to high electricity demand, accelerating the energy transition process. It allows us to start from scratch and covers everything that happens until a new renewable asset starts operating. 

ANTARES pursues collaboration, value creation and smart data management and enables us to share experience and knowledge. It provides various functions to the renewable development teams in each country:

Management autonomy

The same platform can be used to manage business origination opportunities through agreements with third parties as well as to manage its own projects.

Integrated project management

It covers all stages of renewable development, from site identification to project commissioning. It also facilitates the management of implementation, from engineering to contracting, construction and commissioning.

Definition of workflows between the different specialist profiles

It improves efficiency and response time in managing critical activities and can map task execution.

Project pipeline management

It provides periodic reliable reporting on pipeline status in an agile way.

Interconnection with existing systems

The platform connects to other systems, allowing progressive adoption of features based on the organisational maturity of each development team.

Moreover, ANTARES provides global growth management teams:

Integrated view of the total pipeline

It provides the aggregate position of the different countries’ pipeline.

Monitoring of the strategic investment plan

Early warnings and compliance risks are identified to define response plans with the countries.

Business intelligence

Based on the quality of projects and investments in different markets and countries.

Project origin story

The idea of ANTARES was born at the end of 2022 under the framework of the "Digital Boost", our major transformational digitalisation project aimed at optimising all the company's processes.  

The ANTARES platform shares its name with the brightest star in the Scorpius constellation and comes from the Greek "anti Ares", meaning "the rival of Ares/Mars". Because of its power and reddish colour, Antares competes for prominence with the planet Mars (Ares in Greek) in the night sky, which represents the God of War in Greco-Roman mythology. In Egyptian astronomy, the star represented Serket, the goddess of healing. The poetics of the name –chosen through an internal competition–inspired the design of the logo, which became an identifying marker, merging the colour of the star with the contribution to the necessary decarbonisation of the planet.

ANTARES also embodies the sense of urgency and acceleration claimed by the project: Advancing New Tangible Assets REnewableS (ANTes, mÁs REnovableS).

Relevance of the ANTARES project

In a scenario of growth in several countries, with complex and unique markets, where every step of renewable energy development is a challenge, efficiency and resilience are essential to drive the deployment of renewable energy sources.

Iberdrola has a pipeline of more than 100 GW of renewable projects diversified by technology in onshore wind, offshore wind, photovoltaic, hydro and energy storage. These projects are also distributed across a wide range of territories, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Spain, PortugalExternal link, opens in new window.  and other European Union countries. 

This wide technological and geographic variety is essential to drive clean generation and has allowed us to establish ourselves as a world leader in renewable energy. It also introduces an inherent complexity unique to each project due to differences in countries, technologies and markets. 

Managing such diversity presents the important challenge of standardising and digitising the development process, which in itself is not simple, without taking away local management autonomy, adapting the standards to the conditions in each country. ANTARES offers an innovative solution without slowing down business operations in today's competitive and complex market conditions. 

Mapa ANTARES

ANTARES’s advantages

ANTARES improves the management of Iberdrola's renewable growth through a series of advantages in two key areas: productivity and organisational culture.

Productivity

  • It is based on a single source of information, with data quality and no duplication
  • It improves decision making by involving different business areas
  • It enables integrated management of opportunities and projects
  • It boosts tasks managed by specialists, with greater traceability and optimised management
  • It allows for scalability, connectivity and adaptability to new processes
  • It provides an integrated view of KPIs and self-service reporting

Organisational culture

  • It aligns Iberdrola's culture in all the countries in which we operate
  • It standardises language and development processes
  • It customises each country with its conditions
  • It promotes collaboration and efficiency
  • It allows for knowledge and experience exchange
  • It makes onboarding easier

Three key factors for achieving efficiency with ANTARES

ANTARES has been a major challenge as it is tackling a substantial transformation of working methods in continuously evolving organisations in a complex international context. Digitalisation eliminates 75% of the causes of human error and improves process efficiency by 40%. This translates into less energy consumption, faster development and administration, less paper and less travel between countries. 

It also accelerates renewable development, contributing directly to the reduction of CO2 emissions by boosting clean energy. To illustrate the contribution of these sources, a new 100 MW wind power plant in Spain displaces a non-renewable one. This means 100,000 t CO2 are not emitted in one year and nearly 300 t CO2 are not emitted for each day it is brought into operation early. ANTARES drives its deployment and thus contributes to the energy transition. 

Icono aerogenerador

+1,000 projects

with more than 250 users

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300 t CO2 not emitted

per day of advance of a 100 MW wind power project in Spain

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75% of the causes

of human error eliminated aand process efficiency improved by 40%

Efficiency has been achieved thanks to ANTARES’s three innovation factors: user-driven change management, digitisation of a complex process and scalable data architecture. 

User-driven change management

Users are at the heart of change management. Initially, a small group of users based in Spain with established international business experience was selected. These first digital boosters were a sample of the different specialities in development and implementation. With the idea of becoming more digital and significantly improving their daily work, they bought the purpose, chose the name and participated in the functional definition and user experience.  

Later, with the initial experimental version of ANTARES up and running, it was key to broaden the user group to capture market nuances. The challenge was extended to Poland, Germany, Greece and France, which constituted a sufficiently diverse set of markets and new digital boosters joined the project.

Perhaps the key to success for a transformation project as ambitious as ANTARES within a thriving business has been the balanced coordination of three change agents:

  • The business sponsor. Understands the business need, sets the strategic vision and is the main driver of transformation, stimulating and pushing the whole team.
  • The user. With their very different specialisations, they are the ones who know how to develop and implement projects and how to make new renewable energy plants come to life.
  • The Centre of Operational Excellence (CoE). With its digital experience, its customer focus and its management of the different partners, it has created an agile and efficient digital solution, adapted to the user.

Digitisation of a complex process

ANTARES can optimise the development of the project pipeline, improving the conversion into tangible assets, with an economic approach and full respect for management autonomy. 

ANTARES, in the development life cycle

Illustration Illustration Pipeline Investment decision Operation start
  • 1 Business opportunities
  • 2 Projects
  • 3 Tangible projects Delivery plan
  • 4 Operating assets

The development process, which appears to be standard worldwide, has particular differences in practice in each country: with different consents and permitting processes, legal considerations, market functioning, language and culture. This in-depth understanding helped to establish a common language that facilitated standardisation among users globally and to define the stages of development and evolution of the digital product. 

The challenge of internationalisation was met by approaching the roll-out progressively. In the initial phase, four European countries were used as test countries: Poland, Germany, France and Greece. This sample of countries made it possible to identify particular cases of renewable development and to find solutions. It also allowed the platform’s flexibility and suitability to be tested. 

Subsequent phases included other countries deploying modules of standardised functionality to assist in the adoption of ANTARES for the future deployment of more powerful modules. 

Scalable data architecture: intelligent digitisation

The challenge is not a easy one. Managing a large volume of data from a complex business development —a pipeline of different renewable generation technologies, with technical and administrative specificities and in more than 20 countries, and involving multiple specialised profiles— requires order, clear priorities and a strong understanding of the business.  

ANTARES has a comprehensible, clean and, crucially, scalable data structure. The objective was to set up a single source of information to socialise business knowledge. This platform means the development can be adapted to the users and the local context of each country. Although this starting idea is complex, its aim is to continue to grow and evolve to improve functionality, processes and user experience, key factors that have marked the design of the data structure. 

Digital platform: relevance and functioning

ANTARES incorporates the modules of Opportunities, Projects, Pipeline, Investment Plan, Business Insight and allows others to be added as the evolution of the business process demands it, as well as integration with AI (artificial intelligence) assistants once module deployment is completed.

ANTARES, accelerator of renewable development

1 Business insight

Business intelligence
  • Self-service reports
  • Availability of details
  • Integrated view of information
  • Integration with operational data
  • Integration with AI assistants

2 Investment plan

Delivery of growth
  • Monitoring delivery
  • Risk management
  • Capacity report
  • Investment report

3 Pipeline

Country pipeline
  • Segments management
  • Milestones management
  • Pipeline scenarios
  • Pipeline report
Global pipeline
  • Pipeline optimisation
  • Risk management

4 Projects (*)

Development
  • Site identification
  • Land management
  • Grid connection management
  • Permitting
  • Energy calculation
  • Plant design
  • Technical scenario management
  • Energy sales (RtM)
  • Economic scenario management
  • Investment assessment
Construction
  • Value chain management
  • Engineering management
  • Construction monitoring
  • Commissioning follow-up

5 Opportunities (*)

Origination
  • Agreements with third parties
  • Co-development
  • M&A

(*) Advanced modules

Partners we work with

The success of the ANTARES platform has been possible thanks to teamwork with, and the coordination and development of our main partners:

Accenture

Configuration, testing and functional requirements team

Nttdata

FrontEnd part (web application and mobile application) developing in UI5 technology

Inetum

Adaptation and change management of the application in the business and user training support

Viewnext

BackEnd part by the SAP specialist team

Thinkersco

User Experience (UX) Support

Iberdrola, leader in sustainable innovation

Innovation is a key strategic variable at Iberdrola that influences all of our businesses and activities. Our goal is to promote the development of disruptive and sustainable technologies, aligned with the fundamental need to decarbonise generation through the massive integration of renewable energies, the promotion of smart grids, and the electrification of demand. 

We have been committed to innovation for more than 15 years with programmes such as PERSEO to develop a global ecosystem of start-ups in the power industry to provide access to the technologies of the future. Our commitment to innovation has led us to become the world's leading private energy company in terms of investment in R&D&I (research, development and innovation) according to the European Commission.