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Celebrating Ingenuity at Annual Innovation Forum

Avangrid

Celebrating Ingenuity at Annual Innovation Forum

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On October 14, AVANGRID hosted its 5th annual Innovation Forum, with a theme of  “Leading the Clean Energy Transition.” Each year, the event showcases the employees, projects and partnerships that help the company build a more sustainable, clean and connected, energy future.

“This year’s forum demonstrates many of the ways AVANGRID is using innovation and technology to better serve our customers, our stakeholders and our communities,” said Dennis V. Arriola, AVANGRID Chief Executive Officer. “Today’s energy sector is at an inflection point, where renewable energy, grid investements and advanced digital technologies are converging with customer demand for cleaner, more sustainable energy, and AVANGRID is leading this clean energy transition.”

AVANGRID spent approximately $80 million on innovation projects in 2020 and is on track to increase that in 2021. The company is the third largest renewables operator in the U.S. with approximately 7.9 GW of wind and solar generation, and a leader in the emerging offshore wind industry with 1.6 GW under contract, including its landmark 800 MW Vineyard Wind I project, which is a 50/50 joint venture with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

Some of the technology showcased at the Innovation Forum this year included low-earth-orbit satellites used for monitoring coastal marine life; machine learning tools that automate utility inspections, improve customer service, and provide new insights from advanced weather forecasts; and some of the latest developments in green hydrogen electrolyzers technology, among many other innovations.

Green hydrogen is a hot topic in the energy sector and a new addition to AVANGRID’s Innovation Forum, spurred by its potential for decarbonizing hard-to-electrify energy uses. At Thursday’s forum, AVANGRID emphasized its commitment to lead the nascent green hydrogen economy by presenting updates on the green hydrogen project concepts the company submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy in a response to a July request for information on the technology.

AVANGRID celebrated its innovation culture at the event by featuring its collaborations with some of the world’s top academics in the field. The day’s agenda included presentations from researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale University, among others, on topics ranging from how the company will prepare its grid for a future where most vehicles are electric, to research quantifying the value that solar and battery storage technology could bring to the grid when implemented at scale. AVANGRID also took the opportunity to introduce its employees to Professor Andy Sun, who was recently named to the newly created Iberdrola-AVANGRID Professorship of Electric Power Systems at MIT.

AVANGRID’s collaboration with top universities also extends to students who participate in AVANGRID’s annual Innovation Challenge, which paired teams of students from Harvard University and MIT with AVANGRID employees to develop solutions to some of the energy sector’s biggest challenges. Each year, the audience at the Innovation Forum votes to determine the winning team in the challenge. This year’s winning team was led by Charles Hua, an undergraduate senior at Harvard University studying Math and Statistics with an emphasis on the energy sector. Hua and team proposed an innovative way to increase deployment of renewables and to defer costly grid infrastructure upgraded through the implementation of Grid Enhancement Technologies (GETs). The winning student will receive $10,000 tuition scholarships from AVANGRID as well as cash prizes.

“Collaboration is a key driver of innovation and this year’s Innovation Forum really emphasized how AVANGRID works with world-class students, researchers and universities, innovative startups and cutting-edge technology partners to serve as the architects of the clean energy future that we all need,” Arriola said.

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