The Energy Digital Year in Stories: August

December 31, 2024

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Theme park Toverland's energy efficiency is boosted with Siemens technology

We look at the articles that made the news across the energy space 2024. Today, it is August’s turn, featuring Siemens, Iberdrola, F1 and Aggreko

Siemens’ Energy Solutions Transform Theme Park Operations

Although theme parks are not one of the most featured concepts here at Energy Digital, their reliance on energy and subsequent striving for energy efficiency should not be overlooked.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), amusement parks around the world consumed around 27.4 billion kWh of electricity in 2021 alone.

The US tops the list of energy hungry theme park nations, with China, Japan and the UK following behind.

In line with global shifts toward sustainability, theme parks are increasingly focusing on energy efficiency to reduce operational costs and minimise their environmental impact.

One technology giant contributing to this cause is Siemens, which is helping Dutch theme park Toverland enhance its sustainability and efficiency.

Why? Because in modern-day theme parks, almost nothing works anymore without power.

With this in mind, and as Toverland expanded its themed world Avalon, the park decided to ensure its new four attractions were operated as energy-efficiently and sustainably as possible.

To aid in this pursuit, Siemens deployed its solution, SENTRON Digital, to enable safe, reliable and efficient power distribution at Toverland.

SENTRON’s wireless communication-capable devices — located near the attractions and in a power distribution room — allows the theme park to keep an eye on the energy consumption and operating costs of its new rides, intervene if necessary, reduce downtime and meet relevant sustainability and safety requirements.

How is Iberdrola Using AWS GenAI to Drive Energy Innovation?

Generative AI — and artificial intelligence technologies as a whole — has had a transformative impact on the energy industry.

But its effect ripples and has made its mark outside of the energy space specifically.

The World Economic Forum says AI is helping to transform the energy efficiency of other carbon-intensive industries, whether that be modelling buildings to predict energy use or improving the efficiency of manufacturing through predictive maintenance.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) coins AI and energy as ‘the new power couple’, thanks to AI’s ability to analyse vast amounts of energy data in real-time. This has revolutionised the energy sector, facilitating the optimisation of energy production, better predicting demand and enabling smarter grid management, subsequently enhancing efficiency and reducing waste.

One of the world’s largest clean energy companies and the company in pole position of sister title Sustainability Magazine’s Top 250 Companies in Sustainability 2024, Iberdrola uses AWS capabilities to drive internal developer innovation, optimise business processes and personalise customer service.

AWS’ advanced generative AI tools, including Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, will be leveraged by Iberdrola as part of its broader effort to integrate AI across its operations.

This also builds on the establishment of Iberdrola’s Generative AI Center of Excellence (CoE) earlier this year — founded in collaboration with AWS — which focuses on developing more than 100 Gen AI applications.

“We see AI playing a central role in helping us to deliver the smart grid, renewables and storage technology that will drive the energy transition forward,” says Sergio Merchán, Global CIO at Iberdrola.

“As our preferred cloud provider, AWS will provide an innovative technical foundation to support us on this journey.

“Combining our unified data approach with AI and machine learning capabilities will help us build smarter and more secure networks to automate smart grids and more easily integrate renewable energy.”