In April, the PJM Interconnection—the nation’s largest grid system, spanning 13 states alongside the densely populated mid-Atlantic and Japanese Seaboard—took a giant step towards embracing AI by inking a deal with Google to make use of its Tapestry software program to enhance regional planning and pace up grid connections for brand new energy turbines.
ERCOT, the Texas grid system, is contemplating adopting expertise just like what CAISO is now set to make use of, in line with a supply with information of the plans who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly. ERCOT didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Australia provides an instance of what the long run might appear to be. In New South Wales, the place grid sensors and sensible expertise are extra extensively deployed, AI software program rolled out in February is now predicting the manufacturing and movement of electrical energy from rooftop photo voltaic items throughout the state and mechanically adjusting how a lot energy from these panels can enter the grid.
Till now, a lot of the dialogue round AI and power has targeted on the electrical energy calls for of AI information facilities (try MIT Expertise Evaluation’s Energy Hungry sequence for extra on this).
“We’ve been speaking loads about what the grid can do for AI and never almost as a lot about what AI can do for the grid,” says Charles Hua, a coauthor of certainly one of final 12 months’s Power Division studies who now serves government director of PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for bettering the affordability and reliability of US grids. “Normally, there’s an enormous alternative for grid operators, regulators, and different stakeholders within the utility regulatory system to make use of AI successfully and harness it for a extra resilient, modernized, and strengthened grid.”
For now, Gopinathan says, he’s remaining cautiously optimistic.
“I don’t need to overhype it,” he says.
Nonetheless, he provides, “it’s a primary step for greater automation.”
“Proper now, that is extra restricted to our outage administration system. Genie isn’t speaking to our different elements but,” he says. “However I see a world the place AI brokers are capable of do much more.”
