• Acciona Experience
    • Home
    • Renewable energy
  • Renewable energy
  • Transport
  • Water
  • Social
  • Cities
  • Sustainability
  • Innovation
  • contact
  • CECOER, full control over renewable energies

    • Renewable energy
    Discover how all of ACCIONA's production in the world is managed from a small Spanish town
    • facebook
    • twitter
    • linkedin
    • mail
    • whatsapp
  • You will certainly have heard at some time or other of the butterfly effect. This chaos theory concept relates to how an insignificant event like a butterfly beating its wings in some obscure place can unleash a hurricane on the other side of the world via a chaotic process of amplification: the flapping of a butterfly in Hong Kong can unleash a storm in New York.

    Similarly, a situation such as a low level of oil in the gearbox of a wind turbine generator in Waubra (Australia) generates an instantaneous reaction in Pamplona (Spain) – over 10,000 kilometers away – where a protocol is launched to correct the incident. What happens, though, has nothing to do with chaos theory; on the contrary, we are in ACCIONA’s Renewable Energy Control Center, CECOER, which manages all the company’s electricity production. Read on to find out what this giant technological brain represents and how it works.

  • Manning the clean energy control bridge

    The CECOER is the biggest control center for renewable facilities in the world. From its location in Sarriguren, on the outskirts of Pamplona in Spain, the center manages all the company’s electricity generation plants worldwide as well as those of third parties, and it has four main responsibilities:

     

     

    • Permanent supervision of the operation of wind farms, hydro stations, photovoltaic, solar thermal and biomass plants
    • Immediate detection of incidents at any facility and remote correction, usually locally coordinated
    • Energy management through own forecasting models and real-time sending of information to the operator of the electricity grid in each country
    • Data recording and analysis to optimize the efficiency of the plants
  • In practice, this means that the CECOER is on alert 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to supervise all the renewable energy facilities the company operates the world over, detecting, recording and responding to any incident that might occur. In parallel, the CECOER communicates the production forecast for the hours to come to the electricity system operator in each country, as well as the real-time production of each installation, i.e. it anticipates how much energy each facility is going to generate after analysing the weather forecasts. Likewise, it attends to and applies the instructions sent by the system operator to reduce or increase the energy produced at any given moment, thus maintaining the stability of the electricity grid.

  • CECOER, the control bridge of ACCIONA Energy
  • Participate in our quiz!

    How much energy does CECOER manage?

    Wrong! Try again
    • About 12,000 MW Wrong! Try again
    • + 15,000 MW Wrong! Try again
    • Almost 14,000 MW

    Almost 14,000 MW

    Correct!

    The CECOER manages the power equivalent to that produced by 14 nuclear power plants

  • Meanwhile, the Renewable Energy Control Center functions like a gigantic technological brain processing and storing millions of data from all the facilities for ensuring their correct operation, foreseeing the energy that will be produced in the coming hours and recording what is being generated at each moment. The CECOER demonstrates, day after day, that a high proportion of renewable energy can be integrated into the electricity system with maximum security and reliability.

  • Inside the brain of ACCIONA

    Experiencing a working day in the CECOER, the operations center of ACCIONA, is like attending a perfectly choreographed waltz. As many as 80 people work in continuous shifts, with an imposing 11m2 screen presiding over the room, to ensure the correct operation of all the company’s plants.

    Engineers supervise, and offer remote assistance to, more than 400 electricity generating plants and 270 transformer substations in 20 countries, and any possible incident is monitored in real time so it can be remedied. Every year, over half a million incidents are dealt with, 60% of which are remedied remotely, a percentage that is constantly rising, with the aim of optimizing the availability of the facilities. When it is not possible to resolve a problem remotely, the CECOER immediately contacts local engineers on the ground to resolve the incident as swiftly as possible.

    Thanks to this continuous control by the CECOER, the company successfully manages nearly 14,000 Megawatts, a renewable capacity equivalent to that of 14 mid-sized nuclear power stations.

    The CECOER is always alert to ensure clean and sustainable energy is supplied on five continents

    If you enjoyed reading this story, discover more like it at ACCIONA.

  • Have you enjoyed the article? Share it!

    • facebook
    • twitter
    • linkedin
    • mail
    • whatsapp
    • Sishen: where the sun's the limit

      • Renewable energy

      The photovoltaic plant supplying clean energy to tens of thousands of South Africans is, in itself, a colossal feat of engineering

    • The challenge of storing renewable energy

      • Renewable energy
    • A wind turbine blade mold over 200 wheels

      • Renewable energy
    • From the field to your household appliances

      • Renewable energy
    • ACCIONA is a leader in providing sustainable solutions for infrastructure and renewable energy projects across the world.

        • Renewable energy
        • Transport
        • Water
        • Social
        • Cities
        • Sustainability
        • Innovation
      • ACCIONA Experience
        • Legal Note
        • Cookies Policy
        • Privacy Policy
        • Contact
        • Ethical Channel
        © Copyright ACCIONA Experience 2025
    • Do you like our stories? Subscribe!

      You must provide a contact email

      YOU’RE JUST ONE STEP AWAY!
      Please, confirm your subscription on the email we have sent you and your registration will be completed.

      An error has ocurred while attempting to register your e-mail. Try to register again later.

      YOU ARE NOW SUBSCRIBED TO THE NEWSLETTER! If you've missed our content, try checking your spam folder and add us to your address book so you can enjoy it without any problems.

Information on data protection

In compliance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on Data Protection and with other Data Protection regulations in force, you are hereby informed that your personal data shall be processed by Acciona, S.A. (hereinafter “ACCIONA”), whose identification data are as follows: Tax ID No. (NIF): A08001851; Address: Avenida de la Gran Vía de Hortaleza, 3, 28033 (Madrid); Tel. No.: +34 91 663 28 50; email: protecciondedatos@acciona.com. Your data shall be processed in order to send you information, through the subscription to our Newsletter through electronic means, regarding our latest technological innovation of ACCIONA´s initiative "EXPERIENCE".

The consent given by the data subject by indicating that they have read and accept this data protection information comprises the lawfulness of processing. The data provide is your email address. If you fails to provide the required data, the subscription Request cannot be satisfied. We may also process your satisfaction or preferences, if you voluntarily respond to surveys. Data shall be stored until the elimination is requested.

In order to carry out our purpose, we may give access to your data to service providers (such as technology service providers) who assist us in fulfilling this purpose. Some of its service providers, may be located outside of the European Economic Area in territories that do not offer a level of data protection that is comparable to that of the European Union. In such cases, we transfer User data with appropriate safeguards and always ensuring the security of the same.

The data subject can exercise their rights of access to or rectification, erasure or portability of their data, and/or the restriction of or objection to the processing of such data, by contacting Acciona, S.A. by writing the Department of Data Protection located at Avenida de la Gran Vía de Hortaleza, 3, 28033 (Madrid) or by sending the form available in the link:

FORM

If we consider it necessary in order to be able to identify you, we may ask you for a copy of an identity document. Furthermore, at any time the data subject may withdraw the granted consent by contacting the aforementioned address and file a claim to the Supervisory Authority (Agencia Española de Protección de Datos www.aepd.es). You can also unsubscribe from the Newsletter communication.

For any further information you can visit the Privacy Police on the website https://experience.acciona.com/privacy-policy/.