E-REDES: Charting a Course for Value with Copperleaf
E-REDES, part of the Portuguese EDP group, is the third largest energy distributor in the Iberian Peninsula. Serving 1.4m customers across a distribution network of 53,000 km, EDP is currently investing in innovation and digitalisation to deliver superior quality of service to their networks at reduced cost. As part of its pioneering ‘Changing Tomorrow Now’ campaign, the organisation is investing €24 billion in the energy transition to accelerate decarbonisation and achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.
As an SAP endorsed partner, Copperleaf® recently attended the Business Transformation Tour: Utilities Chapter to shine a light on asset investment planning (AIP) and how E-REDES has used value-based decision making to streamline planning, optimise investment portfolios, and embed a consistent planning process across the business.
Sitting between existing processes for asset management and project management, AIP supports organisations to understand all of the investment needs across the organisation, evaluate the value these investments bring to the company, and use this knowledge to make the optimal investment decisions. SAP focusses on collecting and organising data, managing projects company-wide, and keeping the portfolio on track. In short:
- Copperleaf is for choosing the right work
- SAP is for executing the work well
EDP’s Approach to Investment Portfolio Optimisation with Copperleaf
In 2020, E-REDES selected Copperleaf to help achieve its goals and optimise investments in the network. Together with Copperleaf, E-REDES has created a value framework that reflects how the organisation sees value. This decision-making framework considers any number of metrics—both financial and non-financial—including risks, performance targets, KPIs, ESG (environmental, social and governance) measures, regulatory requirements, and so on.
The Copperleaf Value Framework enables E-REDES to align strategic goals with investment decision making, track how value changes over time, and compare even the most dissimilar investments on a common economic scale so that trade-off decisions can be made with confidence. This allows the company to balance competing priorities and strategic objectives, and evidence why certain investments have been made over others.
Copperleaf has also allowed E-REDES to optimise its investment portfolio to identify the projects that provide the greatest value for the budget available while complying with all the restrictions established at the portfolio level. The solution supports multiple constraints at different levels of the portfolio hierarchy, and offers ‘what-if’ scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis to better understand trade-off decisions. This approach replaces time-consuming, manual processes—which may never find the optimal solution—with an automated process that quickly identifies the investment plans with the highest value.
Embedding a Continuous Planning Process
With the support of Copperleaf and SAP, EDP has been able to implement a continuous planning process that brings consistency, transparency and rigour to investment planning, decision making and execution. E-REDES imports portfolio, investment and financial data from SAP PPM and BW into the Copperleaf solution, which allows the organisation to incorporate various value measures and constraints to analyse ‘what-if’ scenarios and optimise its investment portfolio. This plan is fed back into the SAP system to be developed and executed, and can then be re-entered into Copperleaf when plans change, investments take longer, or projects cost more than expected.
This process ensures that E-REDES can continue selecting the optimal portfolio, adapt to the changing nature of its grid, and make decisions that deliver the most value to the business.
Watch the presentation in full or get in touch to see the solution in action.