eRoots receives ACCIÓ aid to boost its renewable network management software

Support from the Generalitat for one of the startups established within the framework of The Collider Venture Builder program promoted by the Mobile World Capital Foundation. eRoots Analytics, a UPC spin-off founded in 2022, has just received direct aid of 100,000 euros from ACCIÓ's Startup Capital line, aimed at boosting the growth of early-stage startups with high technological potential.

eRoots Analytics has developed pioneering software in the world that analyzes the specific needs of the electrical grid associated with renewable energy production facilities. The goal is to start the pilot phase this year, testing the technology in companies in the sector to demonstrate the product's viability and to begin commercializing the software by the end of next year or early 2025. In parallel, procedures to patent the technology have also begun.

"In recent years, there have been many changes in the energy industries, and particularly in the electrical one, with the irruption of renewable sources, which have a different nature than traditional ones," explains eRoots CEO, Josep Fanals Batllori. "Grids with renewable sources ---he adds--- are based on power electronics, unlike conventional sources (such as coal or nuclear energy). Until now, traditional electrical grids used synchronous generators coupled to turbines, and instead, renewable sources are based on the use of converters, which operate differently," he assures.

This reality and the profound reconversion of the electrical sector demand the development of new methods and solutions, taking into account the reality of an electrical grid with a greater prevalence of renewable energies, which require much more advanced analytical tools, capable of addressing the complex engineering problems generated by new generation methods.

In this context, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) decided to create a company as a result of a decade of intensive research at the Center for Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Drives (CITCEA). The spin-off was established with the aim of creating a new generation of software solutions for electrical grid analysis within the framework of The Collider Venture Builder program in its 2021 edition, led by CITCEA researchers Oriol Gomis, Eduardo Prieto, and Marc Cheah.

According to ACCIÓ, the startup's technology allows studying the particularities of converters used in networks with wind and photovoltaic energy, different from traditional sources, to act in the event of possible short circuits and improve their management. The Barcelona-based startup has developed a system based on algorithms created by its researchers, capable of performing complex calculations to analyze and manage the specificities of electrical grids that operate with renewable energies. To understand how the network works, according to Fanals, "everything starts by treating converters as they really are; we cannot think that they work the same as generators, we must consider that they support different intensity limits and that they act much faster."

For this reason, eRoots has developed this software aimed at network operators who work on analyzing its operation and its behavior under adverse conditions, such as a short circuit. While this type of network incident "can always exist, it is necessary to be able to foresee them and understand their behavior and the effects they will have in order to design and operate the network correctly," explains Fanals. "It is essential to calculate the short-circuit current precisely because, otherwise, certain elements of the network will be oversized and protection systems may not activate when required, and this can lead to additional costs," highlights the CEO of the startup.

The software does not anticipate incidents in real time, "because they are random phenomena," according to Fanals, but it allows "foreseeing what will happen in the future based on the study of previous situations, relying on simulations and advanced calculations." In this way, the startup's solution offers "time and money savings because it allows modeling converters correctly."