Blackouts: from emergency response in Milan to artificial intelligence in Rome, here's how distributors reduce risks

So far, the blackouts affecting electricity grids (the medium and low voltage lines that allow electricity to be transferred to the end user) have been very limited. A sign that the infrastructures have shown some resilience to the effects of climate change and the resulting exceptional heatwaves that have been sweeping Italy in recent weeks. An intense heat wave that, added to the absence of rainfall for rather long periods, exerts a not insignificant 'pressure' on the underground electric cables, forcing them to operate beyond ordinary parameters. As a result, the likelihood of sudden failures increases compared to other times of the year when they do not have to cope with the impact of certain exogenous factors.

This is why electricity distributors have put additional measures in place to minimise the danger of outages due, as mentioned, more to heat dissipation problems than to the high load demand (which is typical in the summer period when the highest demand for electricity occurs), which have a strong impact on cable performance.

Take, for example, E-Distribuzione, the Enel company that manages over 1.1 million kilometres of medium- and low-voltage lines in Italy and distributes electricity to over 32 million customers connected to its network. Faced with the outages that have affected some areas in the centre of Florence, the company has long since adopted solutions that allow it to protect that portion of the Tuscan capital and to guarantee, at the same time, a redundant and 'meshed' electricity grid, i.e., equipped with reserve lines and connections of adequate power. This included an innovative, completely underground electrical cabin under the Santa Maria Novella station, which was crucial in circumscribing the perimeter when the fault occurred. The company then deployed a task force ready to intervene and this helped to contain the disruption. This is a plan that the company is also applying nationwide, and which goes hand in hand with a strategy of strengthening the network in structural terms.

An ad hoc plan is also the one developed by Unareti and Duereti (A2A group) for the electricity networks of Milan and Brescia: over 10 years, 3.8 billion euros of investments are planned, as set out in the group's strategy to 2035. In particular, in the large cities where the great heat waves of recent years have led to an increase in energy consumption and loads on the distribution networks, Unareti has increased the number of teams and invested in improving the organisation of emergency response: mobile laboratories, necessary for fault-finding activities, and excavation teams, crucial at points where critical situations occur that isolate users, have increased. In addition, the process of managing and prioritising alerts was refined, as well as the system of manoeuvres carried out on the electricity network from the control room to make the re-powering of disconnected utilities faster and more effective.

In Milan alone, Unareti invested around EUR 170m in 2024, doubling the annual value compared to 2020 - around EUR 450m in the last three years alone. The company's business plan aims, in particular, to increase power through the construction of new primary substations (the junctions that allow the entry of high-voltage energy from the national transmission grid) and to develop and renew the city's electricity grid - which today has more than 6,000 secondary substations and 7,300 km of underground cables running through Milan.