Vantage Towers Spain has partnered with Finnish telco Elisa Industriq’s energy optimization business, Gridle, to bolster the company’s telecoms infrastructure in the country with a stronger focus on sustainability.

As part of the tie-up, Gridle will help Vantage to strengthen the resilience, value, and sustainability of its infrastructure in Spain.

Gridle notes that the initiative aims to lay the foundation for a virtual power plant on Vantage Towers’ infrastructure and begins with an initial deployment at selected radio base station sites where AI-powered Gridle will optimize the company’s battery systems. 

Spain and Portugal notably suffered a significant grid outage last year, causing disruption nationwide during the country’s worst-ever blackout.

Wireless operators, with a large footprint of cell towers across the region, turned to backup generation to keep their networks online.

“In moments when storms, power cuts, and hybrid threats challenge the resilience of communications networks, it becomes our duty as an industry to explore all avenues that can help strengthen continuity of service. Through this collaboration, we contribute technologies that support operators in keeping networks running not only for hours, but for days when circumstances demand it,” said Nicolas Mahler, interim CEO and CFO, Vantage Towers.

Gridle was initially set up to optimize Elisa’s own extensive fleet of batteries across Finland and Estonia. However, the company now works with a number of telecoms companies, including DNA Towers Finland (part of Telenor Group), to optimize charging, reduce emissions, and participate more efficiently in energy markets.

The company charges batteries during low-cost, low-emission periods, discharges them during price peaks, and trades available capacity in balancing and wholesale electricity markets. According to the company, this can reduce energy costs and carbon emissions, and strengthens network resilience.

“Batteries are essential in protecting nationally critical telecom infrastructure. The blackout in Spain and Portugal last year reminded us how quickly society is disrupted when networks go down,” said Jukka-Pekka Salmenkaita, managing director of Gridle and VP of AI at Elisa.

The deployment of Gridle’s offering in Spain is the company’s southernmost deployment so far. Gridle optimizes a wide range of assets across Northern Europe. These assets include telecom batteries, plus industrial, residential, and grid-scale energy storage systems.