Digitalisation of the Foresight Group’s full portfolio of sustainable infrastructure – including UK solar and wind assets – is well underway.
The company has partnered with Sennen for this digitalisation, with the process beginning twelve months ago with Foresight’s sustainable energy assets, which are located globally.
This partnership between the two is now being expanded to digitalise the full portfolio of sustainable infrastructure, including forestry assets, social projects and sustainable transport infrastructure, with its full portfolio currently worth around £6.1 billion.
Sennen’s technology brings data on all the company’s various projects both in the UK and globally into one place to allow Foresight to analyse performance and report on it quickly and easily.
Alongside handling project data, the system also helps to manage day-to-day operations, with Sennen making reference to Foresight’s supply chain. It stated its technology can be used by all contractors, reducing the volume of data exchange and keeping assets running safely and efficiently.
Sennen is continuing to adapt and develop the system for Foresight, with new features such as work scheduling and risk management currently in development.
Foresight is also using Sennen’s acquisition module, which allows asset managers to link data on new acquisitions so that it flows directly into the wider asset management system.
In the UK, the Foresight Group has been a prolific player in the solar space, and is currently pursuing a 700MW pipeline with UK solar developer Island Green Power as well as a 200MW pipeline with Elgin Energy.
Earlier this year, it made its first UK battery storage acquisition, the 50MW Sandridge Battery Storage project, alongside JLEN.
Ricardo Piñeiro, partner at Foresight, said: “Delivering robust technology that automates asset management and reporting is absolutely fundamental to achieving our ambitious goals to achieve rapid but sustainable growth.”
Digitalisation of the energy industry is continuing to be a key focus of many players, with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy launching a new Energy Digitalisation Taskforce in May.
It also formed a key part of the energy white paper, while companies like Spanish energy giant Iberdrola and UK distribution network operator SP Energy Networks have increased their focus on digitalisation and data in recent years.
Iberdrola in particular lauded how the combination of strong investment in digitalisation, renewables and networks were helping to cushion the impact of COVID-19 in April 2020.