"The electricity system shows us that innovation calls for diversity and contamination"

«The displacement of a single electron by a billionth of a centimetre at one moment might make the difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later, or escaping», wrote Alan Touring in 1950 in "Computing Machines and Intelligence", anticipating the celebrated theory of the butterfly effect. The metaphor is linear, the intention is to make it understood that also an imperceptible small action, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, can determine the future in an unforeseeable way.

If our butterfly becomes a switch, simply turning on the light could generate chain reactions in the electricity system which might trigger a blackout thousands of kilometres away. To avoid this there are the transmission system operators (or TSOs) capable of foreseeing and constantly balancing the supply of and demand for energy. Being well aware of these problems is a measure of the pride that young engineers, specialised in systems for energy, feel when they join Terna, the operator of the Italian national transmission grid. Dario Polinelli, today an open innovation specialist, recounts this experience precisely in this way: «I’m not sure you know: when you switch on the light you slow down all the generators connected to the European grid, but there's someone who makes sure the balance is always constant. As soon as I graduated I wanted to get a job right there».

Dario joined the company six years ago, and initially was engaged in grid management and maintenance activities. «Even now, when I drive to the sea, I sometimes pass by a few pylons that I helped to replace to make a portion of the grid more efficient, or perhaps, in response to intense weather events».

Of those first years he tells us about the many training opportunities, activities that fed his curiosity and enriched his super-technical profile, pushing him increasingly towards innovation. And if no one can imagine their professional career, Dario had it clear right from the start that his creativity was going to find fertile ground in the great process of digitalisation and innovation which the company was, and is, engaged in.

An investment plan of €900 million in 5 years, set aside by Terna to boost these two areas, convinced that they are enabling factors of the energy transition. In this context, the Open Innovation team, in which Dario has worked for two years, is engaged in providing to all the various parts of the company a new, and in fact innovative, point of view. «The idea that we have is to create value solving problems and supporting the business lines thanks to new instruments and solutions. We often speak of "innovation as a service": for us the greatest success is to find an effective solution for our colleagues, a solution that makes people enthusiastic to want to try it, and arrives at the first implementation stage».

There are various possible ways for preparing and facilitating the development of new ideas. It is possible for the research to be launched to tackle a new need of an area of the group, or for the team itself to make a map of the most interesting solutions to be tried out in the company. Usually the biggest challenge is to create a dialogue between two realities that are so distant in history, nature and dimensions: the corporate world and that of startups. But, as often happens, the diversities generate great opportunities of improvement for all the players on the field. In this way, in encouraging meetings, contamination, the potentials of each area emerge and projects of value are generated.

Among the projects Dario remembers some that were particularly satisfying in the results: the pole command device (PCD), thanks to which it is possible to intervene on a pylon without interrupting energy transmission or the international scouting of new solutions to deal with the changed working conditions of the new normal, favouring the now celebrated “new ways of working”. And then there are the always-open forums, devoted to cyber security, big data and analytics, matters that cannot be neglected in a company that looks to the future like Terna.

Also for this study and research are fundamental elements. From the excellent initial onboarding programme to continual learning and courses on soft skills, at Terna we never stop learning. Besides skills there is then the relational aspect: networking, learning from colleagues, exchanging opinions and experiences serves to find the best routes for individuals, and also for the company.

What characterises and is most enjoyable in working in the innovation team is the great variety of subjects and interlocutors. Companies, the world of research, entrepreneurs with an innovative idea, in two years Dario has never been bored, nor is he afraid of being bored in the future: «The ecological transition forces us every day to tackle new challenges. There is talk of integrating renewables, of the need for a more flexible grid. It is not sufficient to increase the kilometres of infrastructures, it is necessary to make use of innovation to be competitive and arrive at building the "system of systems" that will change the face of European energy, encouraging the electrification of consumption, integration of all the energy systems and ensuring flexibility and security so as to cancel out the butterfly effect on electricity consumption».