How does Enexis smarten its organization?

“IoT, sensors, data-science, machine learning; lots of different companies are trying to find their way on how to apply these technologies for their businesses. At the same time, these technologies are popular buzz-words and often are far from reality for a lot of larger companies. At Enexis we’ve found ways to experiment with these technologies and scale successful initiatives. This allows us to deliver direct value to our customers and internal organization. It helps us to raise the quality of our work on a continuous basis. Blockbax is one of our important partners that help us in becoming the smartest electricity grid operator in the Netherlands. Their versatile and scalable solution provides us with direct value for our business and our daily operations.”

What challenges did Enexis face?

“At Enexis we work on a reliable and sustainable electricity grid for today and for the future. We manage and maintain 35,000 secondary transformer substations in the Netherlands. Until recently all data from substations was collected manually by our engineers once or twice a year. Not only was this process very time-consuming, the data collected was only able to paint a very rough picture of the past. We did not have an accurate view of the load on the electricity grid, possible malfunctions or other deviant patterns.

To cope with the increasing load on the electricity grid, accelerated by the energy transition, we need to get more in control. To achieve this, we started placing many different sensors in our substations two years ago. This allows us to collect real-time data on e.g. the load on the various components, but also combines data from smart meters into insights on where large amounts of power is delivered back to the grid.”

How did Blockbax help Enexis to become smarter?

“In a few months' time, Blockbax implemented their Low Code IoT Platform that validates, stores, visualizes and combines real-time and historic data from our substations and smart meters. The platform also allows us to apply real-time analytics to the incoming data. This currently involves hundreds of millions of measurements per day and will grow to over a billion measurements per day.

Blockbax makes it easy for us to access the relevant data and convert it into valuable insights for both our operations and our data analysts. Their platform and expertise enable us to do preventive maintenance and respond to anomalies much faster. As a result, we are able to respond to upcoming issues immediately instead of after weeks or more, which directly contributes to a much safer and higher qualitative energy grid.

One of the big differentiators for us is the ease of use; even our field engineers are now able to access the data and use it to support their daily work. This allows our engineers translate their domain knowledge to the data from the substations and thereby increasing their own efficiency.”

About Enexis

Together with Liander and Stedin, Enexis is one of the largest operators of the Netherlands' electricity grid and gas connections. Enexis is responsible for the gas and electricity of 5.1 million households and manages approximately 139,000 kilometers of electricity cable and 46,000 km of gas pipeline. Enexis is strategically focusing on executing on the excellence of grid management and accelerating the energy transition.